Hey there,

This Labor Day comes on the heels of an important development from last week. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined that employers can mislead their workers about their employment status. According to Trump appointees to the NLRB, it’s legal for employers to tell workers that they’re independent contractors instead of employees -- leading workers to wrongly believe they can’t join a union.

It’s a stark reminder that even as we celebrate the achievements of organized labor -- the 40-hour work week, labor protections, and child and safety standards -- unions are under attack. Private sector union membership has shrunk to 6%. And it’s no coincidence that the decline of the middle class and the decline in union membership have happened over the same period of time.

For decades, we were promised a rising tide would lift all boats. Don’t worry about your slice, they told us, because the pie will grow for all of us. We saw the growth -- with gross domestic product and the stock market going up -- but the vast majority of us haven’t seen our income increase much at all. In fact, while the GDP and Dow go up, life expectancy in our country has started going down. That shouldn’t even be possible.

If we’re going to build a fair and prosperous future for us all, we urgently need a bold new approach to strengthen unions for the next era.

That starts with putting an end to the legal fictions that are holding back workers in the gig economy. As the NLRB’s ruling underscores, too many employers -- an estimated 10-20% -- misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid providing proper wages and benefits. Workers in construction, trucking, and house cleaning are often particularly impacted.

Proposed legislation in California would protect workers from misclassification. Every state should consider similar protections. And when I’m president, we’ll go even further. We’ll penalize employers who misclassify their workers, and make sure that independent contractors can unionize and workers can bargain with the company that actually sets the terms of their employment. As I told striking Uber and Lyft drivers in San Francisco last week while joining them to rally, a “gig” is a job, and anyone doing a job is a worker, with rights.

It’s also time to allow multi-employer bargaining, so that workers in the same line of work who compete with one another will be allowed to bargain together. For example, under my plan, workers at three unionized fast-food restaurants would be able to collectively bring their employers to a single bargaining table and negotiate a single pay package for all three.

Finally, as the economy evolves, it’s critical that we prepare workers for those shifts. As president, I’ll make it easier to pursue education after high school by ensuring that job-training programs actually lead to good jobs and well-paying careers. And getting that education shouldn’t require shouldering a mountain of student debt. That’s why when for-profit higher education doesn’t pay off, we’ll forgive the debt that’s weighing students down.

The gains we take for granted today didn’t come about on their own. They happened because people stood up and demanded them. Now it’s our turn to take a stand.

Thank you,

Pete