Labor
The Wall Street parties have rigged the economy against working people. Over 60% of adults in the US are now living paycheck to paycheck. For 50 years, real wages have stagnated while worker productivity and corporate profits have soared. Inflation fueled by corporate profiteering has driven up the cost of living, eating away at the modest wage gains working people have won.
We need a government that works for working people, not elite wealthy donors. It’s time to restore and expand workers’ rights; support unions, cooperatives and worker ownership; and ensure that working people enjoy the full fruits of their labor.
A Jill Stein administration will:
- Pass a $25 minimum wage, indexed to cost inflation and productivity growth, whichever is higher, with special consideration for geographic locations where cost of living greatly exceeds other areas
- Guaranteed Livable Income above poverty
- Guarantee housing as a human right
- Implement universal rent control
- Increase federal support for worker-owned cooperatives
- Expand and defend workers’ right to unionize to include domestic, agricultural, and so-called “gig” workers
- Ensure worker representation on corporate boards (co-determination) at 50%
- Give voting rights in pension funds to the workers
- Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and end the "right-to-work for less" laws
- Federalize workers' compensation to standardize and ensure full funding for worker’s comp
- Close the pay gap and end wage discrimination based on race, gender, or other factors
- Pass a Federal jobs guarantee to end unemployment
- Pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
- Pass the Wage Theft Prevention and Recovery Act
- End the Landrum-Griffin Act restrictions that bar unions from hiring some formerly incarcerated people
- Eliminate the sub-minimum wage loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act
- Create a National Solidarity Fund, funded by a one cent ($0.01) per worker-hour tax, paying stipends to workers who are striking or locked out
- Encourage Sectoral bargaining through the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
- Utilize civil asset forfeiture against companies guilty of violating workers’ protections (standards to be determined)
- Federally mandate and fund three weeks of paid sick leave, eight weeks of paid vacation per year, and one-year parental leave for all new parents.
- Ban “at-will“ employment by requiring just cause to terminate employment.
- Unionize all federal employees
- Commit to veto any legislation that breaks strikes
“A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.” -A. Philip Randolph