Metropolitics

Reimagining Skill

Nichola Lowe — 2021-10-12T05:00:00Z

Nichola Lowe argues that skill needs to be reimagined, not erased from efforts to strengthen the institutional infrastructure that is needed to deliver better-quality jobs to more workers. Drawing on claims outlined in her recent book, Putting Skill to Work, she presents uncertainty around skill as a generative material for shaping business recovery and growth, allowing worker-supporting institutions to promote changes that result in much better workplaces.
With urban economies rebounding and

- Debates / work, skills, labor markets, employment, jobs, businesses, urban economy

Reflections on Retooling for the Covid‑19 Pandemic

Nichola Lowe & Tara Vinodrai — 2020-06-19T06:00:00Z

Factories are adapting to the new conditions and needs the coronavirus has introduced by retooling production lines and repurposing knowledge and technology to manufacture essential items for Covid‑19 management. Nichola Lowe and Tara Vinodrai assess the nature and scale of these retooling efforts and argue that institutions can support manufacturing in ways that respond to crises and support economic regeneration.
Factories in cities and communities around the world are retooling production

- Essays / manufacturing, Covid-19, coronavirus, industry, textile industry, North Carolina, South Carolina, United States, North America, start-ups, pandemic

Reskilling Urban Manufacturing: Workforce Solutions from the Inside Out

Nichola Lowe — 2015-12-15T15:59:35Z

In the United States, a four-year college education has gradually come to be assumed as a prerequisite for entry into the middle class. This is troubling, as more than half the country's working-age population lacks this credential. Rather than being driven exclusively by a “college for all” mentality, argues Nichola Lowe, policymakers should strive for an economy in which social-mobility strategies are also embedded in the workplace, activating internal structures within firms that support and

- Debates / United States, work, public policy, industry, blue-collar workers, education, manufacturing, skills, training