This is a cross-post from the Working America Coalition.
We want elected leaders who think big. Today, two families control more wealth than half our population. One family is spending almost a billion dollars to influence our elections. Meanwhile, more than 60% of American households are one missed paycheck away from economic calamity. This is not the America we should leave our children. We can and must do better.
We will fight for an inclusive economy that lifts wages, improves working conditions, and grows the middle class. We respect the dignity of each individual and believe everyone has a right to share in the wealth they helped create.
We stand for families and fairness. Laws must recognize the fact that most parents work and that many people care for aging parents. We stand for every working person having paid sick days, paid family leave, and predictable schedules. It’s past time for equal pay for women.
Everyone who works—including those who work for tips—deserves a $15-an-hour minimum wage indexed to the cost of living.
We are willing to fight for our democracy: For the expansion and protection of voting rights at the federal and state level and for an end to elections bought and paid for by corporations and their billionaires.
The key to addressing wage stagnation and growing inequality is rebuilding workers’ bargaining power. That begins with full employment. There should be a good job for everyone who wants one in America.
It’s time for new financial rules that encourage productive investments in job-creating businesses. We will push to break up too-big-to-fail banks.
America must invest in the national infrastructure for a 21st century economy. This means trillions of dollars of new investments in our transportation, water, communications, and energy systems—including universal broadband, high speed rail, and a smart electrical grid.
Our country can and should promote manufacturing in America again. We must change our trade rules to prioritize the interests of the American people, instead of global corporations. We oppose all trade agreements that give new rights to foreign corporations, allow currency manipulation to continue, encourage the offshoring of jobs, and repress workers’ rights and wages. That is why we strongly oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership and reject a lame duck vote. We want to eliminate all incentives, including tax loopholes, that encourage companies to offshore jobs.
We believe it’s time to invest in our communities again, starting with publicly financed pre-school. We want every child to have first rate education that includes access to a college education or vocational training.
We are committed to affordable, quality health care for all, and ultimately, a single-payer system. We want the health care excise tax repealed and the assault on good employer-provided benefits stopped. People under 65 years old should be able to opt into Medicare, and America should create a public health insurance option.
We believe everyone deserves to retire with dignity. We stand for strengthening and expanding Social Security and will fight any cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Promises to pensioners should be sacred. Employers should not be able to use bankruptcy to back out of their obligations, and public employees’ pensions must be protected against Wall Street attacks.
Working people deserve the right to join together to demand better wages and working conditions without fear of firing or retaliation – whether we work at Walmart or Nissan or Uber or in the public sector in Wisconsin or the private sector in Mississippi. And we want teeth in these laws, so employers can’t delay and defy the rules for years while workers wait for justice.
It is time for equality at work and in our communities. Everyone deserves this, without regard to who they love or how they look. The families of the millions of hardworking immigrants who do our toughest jobs deserve full citizenship, nothing less. It is time we stop abusive employers who use our immigration system to exploit people.
We support the full restoration of citizenship rights for formerly incarcerated people. We need safer working conditions for the workers of this system as well as humane treatment for the people incarcerated. The operation of our criminal justice system is a governmental function, and it must be accountable to the public.
In our America, we respect each other, we take care of each other and we invest in our country so all may find prosperity, not only the wealthy few.