Can Republicans learn to talk about the American workplace?

The 2016 election will, like every presidential election, turn in large part on the state of the economy. Perhaps by next November things will be absolutely booming, or perhaps we will have plunged back into a recession. But the more likely state of affairs is something like what we have now: strong job growth, not enough wage growth, and a pervasive sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the American economy works. Both parties need to arrive at a set of proposals that will convince voters they actually have some idea how to address the problem. But so far, it seems that only one party is even trying.

Much of the difference between Democrats and Republicans on the economy comes down to how they look at the workplace, and how involved government should be in setting the rules and conditions that govern it. The Democratic position is that government should guarantee certain things for employees, like safe working conditions, health coverage, the ability to bargain collectively, and paid sick and family leave. Some of those are old fights, and some are relatively new. For instance, despite the fact that the United States is the only industrialized democracy that doesn't mandate paid parental leave, Democrats are just now putting that issue high on their economic agenda.

The Republican position is essentially that government should create the conditions that lead to economic growth, and leave it to employers to determine how to treat the people who work for them. That presents a political problem, however: If the economy is creating plenty of jobs but people still feel insecure and dissatisfied, telling them that your economic plan ends when more jobs are created might not be persuasive.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For instance, here's what Carly Fiorina told CNN when asked about Netflix's new policy of unlimited paid family leave and whether the government should mandate at least some: "I don't think it's the role of government to dictate to the private sector how to manage their businesses, especially when it's pretty clear that the private sector, like Netflix, like the example that you just gave, is doing the right thing because they know it helps them attract the right talent." Anyone who thought that as the sole woman in the GOP primaries, Fiorina might be more sympathetic to the plight of workers who need paid time off would be mistaken. And her fellow Republicans agree with her.

As it happens, Netflix's generosity has its limits: Its policy applies only to "salaried, streaming employees," meaning the low-paid people who work in its distribution centers moving DVDs in and out of envelopes won't get the benefit. Which is much of the American economy in microcosm: highly educated white-collar workers can expect a good benefits package, while those lower on the scale can expect to be treated like interchangeable cogs whose well-being is of little or no concern to their employers.

Fiorina's position isn't surprising: As a conservative (and the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard to boot), she believes that employers should set the rules without government intrusion. If your boss decides to give you something like paid leave, that's fine, but they shouldn't be forced to. I assume that in theory she thinks that there ought to be some set of rules the government imposes on employers — like, employers shouldn't have the right to flog employees who don't finish their TPS reports on time — but she wants those rules to be as limited as possible. Liberals, on the other hand, just disagree about what kinds of things the government should mandate. They don't think employers ought to be required to provide a masseuse for every employee, but they have a longer list of the things that are so basic that they ought to be provided: a living wage, health insurance, paid family and sick leave, safe working conditions, and so on.

So naturally, Democrats will have more to say about the American workplace than Republicans will, simply because they're the ones who think government ought to be trying to make that workplace as fair and equitable as possible. Republicans will be offering essentially the same thing they have for decades: if we cut taxes and cut regulations on corporations, the result will be prosperity for all.

I suppose it's hard to blame a party for not altering its ideology to make it more politically palatable. And there's no guarantee that the Democratic policies would give Americans all the security and economic opportunity they crave. But the workplace is where people actually encounter that big abstraction we call "the economy." When most people's experience leaves plenty to be desired, they may be less than overwhelmed by a party that tells them that once they get a job, they're on their own.