Tonight I want to speak with you not about labor unions, but about the common future of those who labor; about what has too often happened to the great American dream, and about how we can bring new opportunities to millions of Americans.
The Americans of whom I speak, however, are not the poor, or the Negro, or the many victims of our slums.
The Americans of whom I speak share but one characteristic with the poor: that the opportunities available to them are not as full and free as they could and should be. I speak of all Americans.
We are now engaged in a great experiment: an attempt to bring new education, new training, new jobs to the poor and the distressed…an attempt to bring new comfort to the elderly and new fulfillment to the young.
In these attempts, we are exercising our imaginations and our will, and the power of government to initiate change, to enrich the lives of one or another group of our people.
But we have not exercised that same imagination and will, or the same ability of government to initiate and stimulate action, on behalf of Americans who are not poor, not cut off from the twentieth century, not handicapped by racial discrimination or age or youth.
The question will be: Why should we? What help do these more fortunate Americans need—in a time of record gross national product, of increasing prosperity throughout the society?
The answer can be found by examining a series of current problems…A…major problem we now face is a mismatch between available jobs and people without work. The greatest demand for new workers, now and for the next ten years, will be in the professional, technical, and highly skilled fields…The greater bulk of our unemployed, by contrast, are those with the least education, the least training, and lowest skills…
It would seem to make better sense to upgrade all of our workers…
The time has come when we must open the channels of opportunity—the chance for new labor and new lives—for all our citizens.
To this end, I propose:
First: We should now begin to study ways in which workers presently in the labor force could be assisted and encouraged to resume their education, continuing through college…
The time has come when we must open the channels of opportunity—the chance for new labor and new lives—for all our citizens.
A program of…extending opportunity for higher education might well be directed, at least in part, to meeting our urgent needs for public service workers. For example, the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Course now pays students full tuition, room, board, and incidental expenses in return for four years’ guaranteed service after graduation. We might extend scholarships to older students on a similar basis, perhaps requiring three or four years’ work in Appalachia or Harlem, or in technical assistance abroad, in return…
Second: State and local educational systems should engage in similar studies of ways to further the education of adults who wish to return to school…
Third: Federal and state job-training programs should be made available, as resources permit, to persons now employed…
Fourth: An expanded and more vital U.S. Employment Service could act as a nationwide clearinghouse of jobs and job-training opportunities…
Fifth: Any effort to upgrade skills throughout the economy will require close partnership of business , labor, and government…
Sixth: If we are to allow new mobility to our people, we will have to assure them that rights they have earned—equities built up in pension funds—are not lost…We should now, therefore, actively explore the possibilities of progressively reducing the vesting period and insuring transferability of pension rights…
Seventh: The benefits of further education and training should not be thought of as only for younger workers…We should make every attempt to use [the] full potential [of retired workers], particularly in community-service work; perhaps part-time training for it could take place during the last several years before retirement.
The foregoing is no exhaustive list. By its very incompleteness it demonstrates that we are only at the beginning of a beginning in thinking about opening opportunities for all. More thinking must begin now. For the pace of change—in our economy, in our politics, in our whole society—can only accelerate.
Change is chance—which, as Pasteur said, “favors the mind that is prepared.” Let us now then prepare the minds of all our people—and the tides of chance and change will favor all of us.