Future uncertain for Hawaii’s lowest-paid workers

When I joined the Honolulu Star-Bulletin 50 years ago, hundreds of men and women worked in the backshop — operating Linotype machines, setting lead type in galleys, engraving photos, making page plates, running the press and inserting advertising supplements.

At modern newspapers, pages go straight from newsroom computers to highly automated presses, with a relative handful of workers involved in the printing.

My wife worked as an airline reservations agent, helping travelers find the most convenient and budget-friendly flights.

Today, her old Honolulu reservations office is gone, with much of the work outsourced to cheap foreign labor or automated online.

We comfortably retired before the worst hit, but we worry about the perilous jobs future facing our children and grandchildren.

The work lost to outsourcing and automation in major industries represented good middle-class jobs with excellent benefits, where hard work paid off in economic security.

Today’s labor market tilts increasingly toward lower-paying service jobs and freelance work.

The good wages, affordable health care and reliable pensions that allowed my wife and me to provide for our family and retire in comfort are harder to come by unless you work for the government.

This loss of quality jobs, shrinking middle class and concentration of wealth at the top signals a coming crisis nearly as great as climate change — and we’re doing little to prepare for it.

IT HITS ESPECIALLY hard in Hawaii: Despite relatively low unemployment, we have a severe shortage of high-quality jobs needed to afford our high-priced housing and crushing overall living costs.

Bills in the Legislature to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 would help some who work multiple jobs to survive, but would do little to solve the long-term problem.

Broader measures with much less traction include a proposal by Rep. Chris Lee to provide a basic minimum income to everybody and another by Rep. Kani­ela Ing to provide a state job to anybody who needs one.

These may be unrealistic in terms of sustainability, but at least some lawmakers are thinking about the challenge and starting to define its scope, which will only worsen as companies like Amazon and McDonald’s go after even the lowest-paying jobs with smartphone apps to replace supermarket cashiers and robotic burger flippers.

National policy goes in exactly the wrong direction with a tax policy that concentrates more wealth in the hands of the already rich and corporations responsible for jobs lost to automation and outsourcing — to be paid for by cutting the safety net for those displaced.

Without a state plan, we could face a future where even more locals leave Hawaii for economic survival and those who remain are increasingly divided between the rich living in luxury condos and the poor living on the sidewalks below.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.