Greener Pathways

A new report from COWS puts jobs at the heart of the national conversation on the economic promise of clean energy.

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Choosing the High Road

Business firms face a choice about how to compete in today’s economy. They can concentrate chiefly on lowering the costs of their goods and services while improving their consistency, or “quality.” Or they can, while attending cost and quality concerns, concentrate chiefly on increasing their product’s distinctiveness and performance, for which customers are willing to pay a premium. Profits can be made on either route, but they have very different consequences for the communities in which firms operate (cities, states and regions, nations). The first strategy, which we call the “low road,” is associated with downward pressure on wages, increasing job insecurity, more outsourcing of work to low-wage regions, greater environmental damage, underinvestment in productive public goods, and resistance to public standards on private firm behavior. The second strategy, which we call the “high road,” is associated with higher and more equal wages, better labor relations, more environmentally sustainable practice, greater investment in productive public goods, and affirmative support for public standards on the private economy.

For society, the high road is clearly the better choice. But it is typically not made in the US. In general, we keep the low road option available through relatively weak wage and benefit, environmental, and trade standards. And we haven’t supported the high road by investments in the public goods and targeted services – from education and training to other infrastructure, or modernization services for firm upgrading – that it needs to succeed.

COWS basic mission is to make the dangers of the low road strategy clearer to communities, and to work with interested stakeholders – business and labor, government and citizens – in making the high road choice easier to pursue. We do this through research, policy analysis, demonstration projects on high road reform, and evaluation and public education.

To read more about the "high road," click on the links below.

• Daniel D. Luria and Joel Rogers, "Metro Futures," September 28, 1999
• High Performance Partnerships: Winning Solutions for Employers and Workers (April 1999)
• Laura Dresser and Joel Rogers, Rebuilding Job Access and Career Advancement Systems in the New Economy, December 1997
• Joel Rogers, "Labor and Economic Development," September 4, 1997

Learn more about COWS Director Joel Rogers, one of the nation's leading advocates of the "high road."