Grocery workers, food delivery workers, restaurant workers, cleaners, hospital orderlies and EMTs are putting their lives on the line in this strange world war. They are tomorrow's veterans—and they deserve more than just our thanks.
After World War Two, America expressed its gratitude to returning veterans by supporting their education. We subsequently renewed and made permanent these well earned benefits for veterans. We should do the same today for the people who are on the front line: grocery workers, food delivery workers, restaurant workers, building cleaners, hospital orderlies, EMTs, and everyone else on whom we have come to realize we depend for our very lives.
Equally importantly, we want to give people a chance for something better, a chance to climb the occupational ladder. I recently surveyed a representative sample of working Americans and documented a troubling training gap for low-wage and other frontline workers. I asked about skills training people had received in 2019. Among people who earned $30,000 or less 46 percent received training from their employer, while 62 percent of those who earned above this threshold upgraded their skills on the job. The divide is equally sharp by educational attainment.
Such a bill—let's call it a GI Bill for Today's Heroes—would provide a living stipend and cover at the minimum two years to tuition and fees in post-secondary education and training. It would be targeted to frontline workers and the unemployed and hence, unlike recent college-for all-proposals, would not fund schooling for the well-off. Traditional post-secondary institutions would be eligible, but so would apprenticeships and some forms of online education.
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