The U.S. work force is unready for the new jobs, unready for the new realities, unready for the new challenges of the 1990s. Across the board, jobs are demanding better reading, writing, and reasoning skills and more math and science. Statistics define the scope of the problem: 25 percent of young people drop out of high school; 70 percent of all high school seniors cannot write a basic letter seeking employment, and 60 percent of them cannot correctly add up their own lunch bills. The skills of a large number of experienced workers are now obsolete or soon will be made obsolete by changes in technology. At least 20 million adults experience substantial literacy problems. Proposals for partnerships between business, labor, and education include the following: a Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills; a school-to-work national conference; a "portable credentials" program; sharing of "best practices," a school and business relationship called Partners for Tomorrow, and the Secretary's "Lift (Labor Investing for Tomorrow) America" awards for outstanding business and school partnerships, innovative school-to-work programs, outstanding employee training programs, and superior efforts to make a difference in employee worklife through such efforts as child care programs, employee benefits, innovative labor and management initiatives, and recruiting of minorities, at-risk youth, the disabled, and the disadvantaged. (CML)