President-elect #donaldtrump and conservatives on Capitol Hill are preparing to unleash a series of economic policies in an attempt to undermine years of progress.
Tax cuts for the rich and corporations, deregulation of finance and worker protections, and assaults on unions would all undercut U.S. workers’ economic clout, not increase it.
The blame for workers’ plight should be placed squarely where it is due: on the corporate owners, top managers and Wall Street financiers, and the policymakers in their sway.
We must stand united to protect U.S. workers and families from the conservative tried-and-failed trickle-down policies of the past.
Stand together and become a co-sponsor of the five-point Real Agenda for Working People to create an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. This agenda is a yardstick for measuring the Trump Administration’s policies.
A Real Agenda for Working People:
Restore full employment
Create an economy where employers have to compete for workers by raising wages
- Launch a 10-year, $1.2 trillion public investment program in infrastructure, clean energy, scientific and medical research, early child care, education, and health care delivery.
- Create public employment programs for areas with high unemployment rates and with large concentrations of low-wage workers.
- Nominate and retain Federal Reserve Board governors who will pursue full employment and wage growth.
Strengthen—not gut—rules that support good jobs
Preserve and expand rules that support good jobs and create economically secure families and a fairer economy
- Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 and index it to wage growth.
- Build a universal, nationwide child care system.
- Enact paid family and sick leave and promote sensible work scheduling.
- Strengthen the Department of Labor to enforce labor standards including employee misclassification, wage theft, and prevailing wage violations.
- Use all the tools at our disposal to eliminate discrimination in hiring, promotion, and pay of women and workers of color.
- Reform immigration laws to provide legalization and a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.
- Reform—rather than expand—guestworker programs so that temporary migrant workers are not underpaid and have access to labor standards and workplace protections.
- End forced arbitration in employment contracts and consumer financial services agreements.
Protect the basic human right of worker organization
The freedom to bargain collectively
- Strengthen protections for working people who organize and promote change through collective action.
Level the playing field that trade agreements slanted against workers
Globalization depresses wages—and our trade policy makes it worse
- Fight exchange rate misalignments that hamper U.S. exporters and lead to trade deficits.
- Enforce trade laws that help U.S. workers.
- Reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other trade agreements that protect U.S. and multinational corporations but not workers.
Raise top tax rates to invest in America and restore power to the bottom 90 percent
The top 1 percent do not need tax cuts that increase their incentive to further rig the economy’s rules
- Eliminate tax preferences for executive pay, or make deductions for executive pay contingent on granting rank-and-file wage increases equal to productivity growth.
- Implement a financial transactions tax (FTT).
- Raise top marginal income tax rates.
For more details on the Real Agenda for Working People visit www.epi.org/workers-agenda.