Policy Memo: To Strengthen the American STEM Workforce, Empower Workers

by Justin Lee and Carolyn Amir

https://doi.org/10.38126/JSPG200205

Executive Summary

A just, healthy, and robust science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is vital to social organization and human well-being in the modern world. However, economic elites can shape scientific and technological priorities by defining the “national interest” and “needs” of the market, which greatly influences the future of human power relations and material conditions. When contemporary policy debates in STEM education and workforce development focus on how K-12, university, and technical education can provide a workforce for businesses and advance the “national interest”, the resulting policy agenda centers the interests of these socio-economic elites. This paper seeks to reframe debate on STEM education and workforce development policy from a paradigm of nation-state competitiveness and market demand to one centered on workers and democracy. We argue that “who governs” the science and technology workforce and “who benefits” from the status quo of STEM education and workforce development policy is not who should govern and who should benefit, but rather the political and economic elites which steer the world’s largest companies and states. This reframing not only recognizes the fundamental interdependence of economic and political power, but that power is a feature of a social order co-produced with and through scientific inquiry, technological change, and knowledge creation. We advocate for the reimagination of the status quo to recognize that the STEM workforce is composed of, first and foremost, working people. We argue for science and technology workers to recognize common solidarity with all workers and organize to determine their own futures. Lastly, we propose a policy agenda which would empower them to do so by strengthening labor rights and expanding the worker-owned economy.