Workers' Rights

Progressive States Network works with advocates and legislators to advance workers' rights as a core element of the progressive agenda. Our focus is on basic labor standards that enjoy popular support, including ensuring that American workers receive a decent wage and the right in the workplace to stand up for their own interests and promoting a balance of work and family by guaranteeing workers the right to earn paid sick days and paid family leave.

• Paid Sick Days: Guarantee workers the right to earn paid leave to care for their own or family- members’ health, or to seek assistance related to domestic abuse, and to prevent retaliation by employers against workers for taking sick leave they have accrued.
• Paid Family Leave: Create a paid leave insurance system to provide partial income replacement to workers who qualify for long-term family and medical leave, both to care for newborn or newly-adopted children or to care for their own or a family member’s long-term medial condition.
• Minimum Wage: Increase the minimum wage rate to a level that has historically supported a robust middle class and reflected a lower degree of wealth disparity, and automatically adjust the wage rate annually so that it keeps pace with inflation.
• Wage law enforcement: Strengthen enforcement provisions of wage and hour laws to empower workers to pursue claims for wage theft and contractor misclassification, which deprive especially low-wage and immigrant workers of much-needed income and local and state governments of revenue from employment, income and other taxes.