Government, Courts, and the World of Work

On January 19th, New Jersey will have a new governor - Chris Christie.  His job will be enormously complex, perhaps more difficult than any predecessor in living memory.

New Jersey faces short and long term economic challenges and potential opportunities.  The two-year recession has accelerated long term trends and its aftershocks will leave a permanently altered business environment for the state.  Chief among these trends are the continued depletion of manufacturing, the decline of private sector labor unions, outsourcing, and the consolidation of big corporations.  

Additionally, the federal health care reform will most likely permit New Jersey to opt out of whatever government- administrated health care exchange is likely to emerge. This decision will be extremely complicated  and will have a big impact on the health and welfare of the workforce. The new Governor will need to collaborate on health care and labor issues.

There is also a massive workforce development component in the health care reform.

Governor Christie has an opportunity to refocus on job training and workforce health, wellness and productivity.  He should look carefully at how existing job training money is being spent and begin an immediate dialogue with Washington, D.C.  The U.S. Department of Labor has a big fund for worker retraining. So there cannot be an adversarial relationship with the Obama administration. There has to be a very close working relationship in order to transform the state’s unemployment insurance program into a retraining and reemployment program.

New Jersey cannot afford to go it alone.  It will require collaboration at all levels of government to succeed.