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Labor markets are central to economic life. They shape the organization of work and the lives of those who work or need work. Recent experience confirms a systemic tilt in favor of employers' needs and interests at the expense of earnings, job security, and opportunities for new entrants to the labor force. Conservative ideology has been effectively linked to employers' interests. The result has been that public policies of demonstrated effectiveness in assuring a better balance in labor markets have been weakened. Changing labor market conditions will require renewal and redesign of these tested remedies and development of new measures adequate to respond to new conditions in the global economy and in labor markets. Among these the most important will be reduced working time, limits on freedom to invest or disinvest capital, stronger community-based power to share in the decision-making process and in the distribution of costs and benefits, and a new synthesis of paid work, work that is important to society, and leisure. These are specified and discussed.

Human rights and public health considerations provide strong support for policies that maximize employment. Ample historical and conceptual evidence supports the feasibility of full employment policies. New factors affecting the labor force, the rate of technological change, and the globalization of economic activity require appropriate policies--international as well as national--but do not invalidate the ability of modern states to apply the measures needed. Among these the most important include: (I) systematic reduction in working time with no loss of income, (2) active labor market policies, (3) use of fiscal and monetary measures to sustain the needed level of aggregate demand, (4) restoration of equal bargaining power between labor and capital, (5) social investment in neglected and outmoded infrastructure, (6) accountability of corporations for decisions to shift or reduce capital investment, (7) major reductions in military spending, to be replaced by socially needed and economically productive expenditures, (8) direct public sector job creation, (9) reform of monetary policy to restore emphasis on minimizing unemployment and promoting full employment. None are without precedent in modern economies. The obstacles are ideological and political. To overcome them will require intellectual clarity and effective advocacy.