Labor Day and Labor Daze

This Labor Day was a time to reflect on the past, present and future of work. I have come to realize labor and work is not just about the "What", but also the Who, the Where, the When and the Why. The time I had to reflect on my own labors this past weekend was partly provided by a bad head cold, or a medium-grade sinus infection. Whatever gave me the opportunity, I took it. And some thera-flu (day time version only, thanks), that helped deliver the daze of these past two days.

Reflection:

Last week I had the privilege to visit Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Accompanying Netherlands Consul General Ahmed Dadou , it was great to converse with and learn from experts at University of Pennsylvania , One Architecture & Urbanism (ONE) , World Trade Center Greater Philadelphia , Philadelphia Museum of Art , PA Chamber of Business and Industry , Harrisburg University of Science and Technology , LocalDutch , Bill Flanagan of WPXI-TV , Alleghany County , and Pittsburgh International Airport .

Sitting on the airport tarmac (in Newark, not Pittsburgh; that's a different story) I began to reflect how in navigating the labor force we often focus on organizations and institutions represented in buildings, budgets, logos, places, products and share prices. Do we focus enough on our human connections? i.e. the folks who advise, introduce, guide, and enable.

Over dinner in Pittsburgh we talked with representatives of PPG Protective & Marine Coatings and Philips Sleep & Respiratory Care , two blue-chip corporations with major operations in the post-steel city (which still has a big steel presence by the way). It has been many years since I was assembling shipping crates in Greensboro, NC for PPG. My, how their business has changed. Ditto for Philips (though I never made crates for them), from lighting and electronics into the deep (blue, and sometimes -red) of health care. Somehow, as workers, and as patients, we regain consciousness and come out of it.

In Philadelphia, one can enjoy truly a #CityBeautiful city, with a magnificent grid and monuments and landmarks terminating almost every vista. A City that can easily pass as NYC's slightly older, more European and more beautiful sister. In Pittsburgh, between the hills and among the rivers you can see a city striding into the future. And Harrisburg, literally between these two heavyweights, with all the same post-industrial urban issues with merely a fraction of the prosperity and an every smaller fraction of the #CreativeEconomy. But it's growing there too.

Pittsburgh, for me, was the highlight - all 25-1/2 hours of it. There, a growing economy is expanding before our eyes, and becoming far more diverse than it was even before the industrial revolution. #Life Sciences and #MedTech and #UrbanAg are growing in all cities, while #Robotics is maturing in Pittsburgh. Perhaps what was most remarkable in all three cities was not the laundry-list of post-COVID urban issues they face (affordable housing, homelessness, vaporized retail, just to name three), but rather the palpable optimism that you can see in life in the buildings, on the rivers, and in the leadership. 

In the socially responsible economy that IS humanity, I will invest my time every time in human capital. We all need to.

Big thanks to colleagues Zwanette Bruggink, Ludiëne Martina, Sidney Plunket, CG Ahmed Dadou , Susan Mills MacDonald, Pierre-Olivier Lugez, Brenton McCloskey, Simon Richter, Howard Neukrug, PE, Maggie Fairs, Gretchen McDonel, Bill Miller, Tina Weyant, Eric Darr, Arne Spliet, Jules Tolbert/ United Way of York County, Meghan Cox, and Vince Gastgeb. And a very special thanks also to colleagues and mentors Wilfred H. Muskens and Tom Johnson who I hope to see again!