ABSTRACT
The primary challenge facing labor and employment policy in the next decade is to reconstruct the social contract between the American workforce and employers in ways that address the needs and realities of a modem economy and society. To do so, the country will need to modernize the labor and employment policies carried over from the New Deal era and foster innovations in labor unions, labor market institutions, corporations, and in their relationships. In this essay, I will sketch out an alternative policy framework that I believe would foster the innovations needed, recognizing that the political will to seriously debate-much less enact-this set of changes is sorely lacking today.1
