Unions and Workers’ Rights

American income inequality has reached epidemic levels. In the last several decades, worker wages have stagnated, even though productivity has skyrocketed. Today, the average CEO pay is 271 times the pay of the average worker, while in the 1950s, this ratio was closer to 20:1. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, a poverty wage that no one in our country ought to be subjected to, especially when corporate profits have never been higher. No one should live in poverty, let alone a worker with a full-time job.

As income inequality has widened, worker power has declined in significant ways.

Unions have been crippled by so-called “right to work” laws, leaving workers with limited bargaining power or potential for collective action. Corporate boards rarely have any real representation from rank-and-file employees: workers have little to no say on pertinent decisions such as outsourcing and employee policy. Workers must have ownership over their own labor as much as possible, and our platform supports policies that empower workers in that right.

Our Plan for Revitalizing Unions and Guaranteeing Workers’ Rights:

• Increase the federal minimum wage to $20/hour (pegged to inflation) for all workers, including tipped workers

• Restore the power of labor unions through federal legislation, enabling and encouraging the formation of labor unions at all workplaces

  • Support H.R. 2474, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act

  • Make it easier to form a union through card-check process

  • Guarantee public sector workers the right to collectively bargain and federal workers the right to strike

  • End exemptions to ensure home health care workers, domestic workers, and farm workers have the right to unionize, workplace safety protections, and fair scheduling

  • Guarantee just cause employment for all workers

  • Guarantee fair scheduling for all workers

  • Guarantee workers have the right of first refusal 

  • Mandate that least 50% of seats on corporate boards of all companies over 2000 employees are reserved for workers or elected worker representatives

  • Guarantee mandatory paid family leave at all workplaces so that no one loses their job over starting a family

• Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act

• Create sectoral bargaining system

• Support the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act to "prohibit discrimination on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition of an individual, as well as because of sex-based stereotypes.”

• Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to ensure that no one, regardless of gender, is compensated differently for the same job

• Provide public incentives for business activity with worker cooperatives