Focus on the Issues Series: Romney on jobs
The Romney campaign’s official website, says that “the dynamism of the American workforce is our country’s greatest renewable natural resource.”
Within this claim, Romney emphasizes the equipment of young Americans with the skills needed to make them viable workers in the future, and cites a perceived disconnect between the skills workers currently have and the requirements needed of available jobs.
His “Human Capital” plan sets itself against the “government waste, political horse-trading, and administrative chaos” of President Barack Obama, and aims to be a simpler alternative to the current administration’s myriad of federal job retraining programs. Romney’s plan focuses on two main goals: retraining workers and attracting bright workers for the future. To better retrain workers, Romney would cut down on the number of federal programs and instead empower individual states to support their unemployed populace. A hallmark of the plan is the Personal Reemployment Accounts system, which would place unemployed individuals into apprenticeship-like position in companies that provide on-the-job training, a system that he created in mass.
The second part of the goal set, to attract the best workers, he’d accomplish by revising the immigration policy to attract foreign individuals with advanced degrees and innovative minds. Romney cites how “immigrants start 16% of our top-performing, high-technology companies.” As president he’d grant permanent residency to graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering.
When it comes to labor unions, Romney recognizes their history of important contributions to the country, but see them as currently harmful to the economy due to their inflating of costs and regulations that stymie innovation. He has a three-step plan to improving labor policy: free enterprise, free choice and free speech.
Free enterprise involves revising labor policy to create a level playing field for businesses. Again, Romney focuses on the power of the state and believes that the federal government should not be able to step in and alter a business’ private labor policies.
The free choice aspect of his plan focuses on open communication and distribution of information concerning unions for an employee. Specifically, he calls for changes to the National Labor Relations Act that will allow for the use of the secret ballot in union certification selection.
Free speech calls for the elimination of “politicking” by unions—the spending of American workers’ paychecks each election cycle. Romney would officially prohibit the use of funds drawn from workers’ paychecks for political purposes.
Samantha Glavin is a Spring 2012 Paste BN College Correspondent. Learn more about her here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.