Find
2011 Blueprint for Economic Security
Job Security
The nation’s greatest resource is people’s ability to work and contribute to the prosperity of their family, their community, and our country. The wealth of a generation is being wasted as careers and retirement plans are derailed, young people are denied the opportunity to develop skills, and personal wealth shrinks – in many cases permanently.
While conservatives see this moment opportunistically as one to attack workers and roll back labor standards that people fought and died for decades to establish, progressives know that now is the time we must do exactly the opposite. Historic advances in workers’ rights were a major factor in the country’s recovery from the Great Depression, providing economic security for working families and even fulfilling the promise that everyone who is willing to work has the means to support their family.
From the Dispatch: Ensuring Job Security by Protecting Workers
American Attitudes on Job Security
Research over the past year has shown that strong majorities of Americans oppose economic and labor policies that harm workers, despite concerted and continued attacks from the right. During the fall 2010 campaign, polling showed that 66% of Americans supported a "robust" increase in the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour. At the same time, other polls have shown similar majorities expressing support for advancing workers’ rights, including vast majorities who believe paid sick days should be enacted as a new labor standard and that overtime pay is a “very important” workers’ right.
Policies to Protect Workers and Bring Security to Working Families
By promoting labor standards that will improve ordinary people’s economic security, we are in a better position to beat back attacks on workers’ rights that further erode the middle class.
- Paid Sick Days: Enabling people to accrue paid sick leave provides workers with an essential element of economic security – knowing that you won’t lose your job, or the roof over your head, just because you or your child get sick.
- Wage Law Enforcement: Merely strengthening enforcement of wage-and-hour laws would bring crucial relief to millions of working families simply by ensuring they are paid the wages they are legally owed. Specific measures include increasing penalties and damages, banning misclassification of employees as independent contractors, prohibiting retaliation against workers for complaining about wage theft, and enabling workers to obtain relief more quickly.
- Restore the Minimum Wage: Restore the Minimum Wage: Restoring the minimum wage to its value in 1968 (~$10/hour) when the middle-class was its most robust and the gap between the rich and the poor was at a historic low would boost consumer spending, small business growth, and job creation by putting money in low-wage workers’ pockets..
For more information on Job Security, contact Tim Judson, Workers' Rights Policy Specialist at 212-680-3116 x116 or tjudson@progressivestates.org
