[The 2020 Democratic primary election is shaping up to provide the
most ambitious blueprint to overhaul US labor laws. And with public
frustration toward billionaires and CEOs mounting, it seems like a
smart campaign strategy.] [[link removed]]

I READ EVERY 2020 FRONTRUNNER’S LABOR PLATFORM SO YOU DIDN’T HAVE
TO  
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Alexia Fernández Campbell
September 5, 2019
Vox
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_ The 2020 Democratic primary election is shaping up to provide the
most ambitious blueprint to overhaul US labor laws. And with public
frustration toward billionaires and CEOs mounting, it seems like a
smart campaign strategy. _

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders marched with a crowd of hundreds to
the Iowa Hall of Fame event in Cedar Rapids Sunday afternoon with
striking McDonald’s workers from Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.,

 

Presidential candidates are going all out to win over working-class
Americans.

Julián Castro marched with McDonald’s workers
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in North Carolina. Pete Buttigieg rallied with Uber drivers in San
Francisco. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders joined striking
supermarket cashiers
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on the picket lines in Massachusetts.

It’s easy to dismiss these gestures as the usual photo ops, but they
reflect the labor movement’s resurgent influence in politics. Most
of the Democratic frontrunners are also releasing detailed policy
platforms that promise workers everything they’ve ever wanted. Paid
parental leave — yes. A $15 minimum wage — check. Paid sick days
— done.

And for the first time, most candidates are really paying attention to
working women and the challenges they face in the workplace, such as
lower pay and few accommodations for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Sure, not every candidate is promising workers major reform. Some
candidates are more interested in incremental changes. But even so,
the 2020 Democratic primary election is shaping up to provide the most
ambitious blueprint to overhaul US labor laws. And with public
frustration toward billionaires and CEOs mounting, it seems like a
smart campaign strategy.

“This is our moment to dream big,” Warren said
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campaign announcement event in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a location she
picked because of its role as the birthplace of the US labor movement.

Reading the labor platforms for each of the 10 candidates who
qualified for the third Democratic primary debate next week, two
groups emerged: the labor reformers and the labor supporters. Most of
the frontrunners fall into the first category — Beto O’Rourke,
Buttigieg, and Sanders have all put out astonishingly detailed
proposals that would shift the balance of power from businesses to
workers. Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and Andrew Yang are in the second
group. They seem to see themselves more as allies to workers and labor
unions than true change-makers.

Most of the reformers — Cory Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders, and
Warren — also explicitly support all the following legislation:

* The Protecting the Right to Organize Act
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which would ban “right to work” laws that allow employees to opt
out of paying union fees in unionized workplaces, even though they get
the benefits of collective bargaining. (O’Rourke supports this too.)
* The Schedules That Work Act, which guarantees predictable
schedules for workers, or extra pay if they have to work irregular
schedules.
* The Paycheck Fairness Act, which would bar employers from using an
employee’s salary history to determine wages, ensure that workers
have the right to discuss wages without retaliation, and require
employers to justify any pay discrepancies. (Castro and O’Rourke
support this too.)
* The Family Act, which guarantees up to 12 weeks of paid family
leave to workers, funded through a payroll tax on businesses and
employees. (Castro supports this bill too.)
* The Healthy Families Act
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require most businesses to provide full-time workers with at least
seven days of paid sick leave. (Castro and O’Rourke support this
too.)
* The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act
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would essentially amend federal labor laws to include domestic
workers. But it would also extend new benefits to them, such as
guaranteed paid time off, privacy protection, and a written employment
contract.
* The Raise the Wage Act
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which gradually raises the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and
indexes future increases to wage growth. It also abolishes the
sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. (Castro and O’Rourke support
this bill too.)

Klobuchar has backed all the bills mentioned above in the Senate,
except for the Schedules That Work Act.

Here’s a summary of each candidate’s labor platform. Without a
doubt, Democrats would need to control both chambers of Congress to
make most of these promises a reality.

The Labor reformers

CORY BOOKER

Booker’s labor platform is thin and somewhat vague, which is an
argument for placing him in the “labor supporters” category. But
his one signature plan is big enough to shift the balance of power in
favor of workers in fundamental ways. That’s the Worker Dividend Act
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he sponsored in the Senate.

The bill would curb how companies buy back their own stocks, forcing
them to give workers a cut. The Worker Dividend Act
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mandate that companies buying their own shares must also pay out to
their own employees a sum equal to the lesser of either the total
value of the buyback or 50 percent of all profits beyond $250 million.

As Vox’s Matthew Yglesias explains
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the bill is “a critique of the overall operation of an economic
system that people on the left have long argued is systematically
broken and stacked against everyone but the very wealthiest
Americans.”

PETE BUTTIGIEG

Somewhat surprisingly, Buttigieg has one of the most comprehensive
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including more than just a wish list from labor unions. He wants to
make sure domestic workers and farmworkers are covered by US labor
laws, which closes a huge loophole that allows employers to exploit
vulnerable workers. He promises paid parental leave, a $15 minimum
hourly wage (indexed to wage growth), and to let Uber drivers and
other gig workers unionize. Here are some other highlights:

* He wants stronger, multimillion-dollar penalties for large
companies that interfere with union elections.
* He wants to let McDonald’s employees and other franchise workers
bargain collectively with multiple employers at the same time, also
known as sectoral bargaining. (Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained that
concept
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which is common in Europe.)
* He wants to establish a consistent preference in federal
government contracting for unionized employers that provide workers
with fair pay and benefits.
* He backs the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require
businesses to make accommodations for pregnant workers.

Buttigieg also suggests a smart change to temporary visas for foreign
workers. High-skilled and low-skilled workers in the US on H-1B or
H-2B visas, for example, would no longer be tied to one employer under
his proposal. That has been one of the biggest problems with the guest
worker programs. Businesses that employ foreign workers end up with
too much power over that workforce, making them more vulnerable to
abuse and exploitation.

 
JULIÁN CASTRO

Castro probably has the weakest platform in this group. He hasn’t
proposed any major plan to extend new rights to workers, but he does
support many of those that his competitors have come up with.

* He wants to guarantee at least seven days of paid sick leave for
all workers at large companies, by passing and building on the Healthy
Families Act.
* He supports at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to
be used during pregnancy, new child leave, to care for a sick family
member, for recovery from mental or physical illness, or for other
family-related reasons.
* Castro wants to ban discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual
orientation, and gender identity by passing and building on the
Equality Act.
* He wants to help close the gender pay gap by protecting workers
against retaliation for discussing salaries, preventing employers from
requiring salary history, and raising the standard of proof for
employers to implement pay disparities by passing and building on the
Paycheck Fairness Act.
* He wants to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to ensure protections
against sex discrimination are included in the Constitution.
* He wants to tax the income stockbrokers and others earn from
capital gains at the same rate as labor income.

KAMALA HARRIS

Harris has focused her labor platform on working women and public
schoolteachers, in particular. She supports a $15 minimum wage and
wants to create stricter penalties for companies that commit wage
theft.

Here are more details from her plan to boost wages for teachers:

* The average teacher in America would receive a $13,500 raise — an
increase of about 23 percent to their base pay.
* The Department of Education will work with state education
agencies to set a base salary goal for beginning teachers in every
state. Under Harris’s plan, states and school districts will
increase every teacher’s salary until, at a minimum, they meet the
goal.
* America’s highest-need public schools, which disproportionately
serve students of color, will receive funding to increase teacher pay
even further.
* Harris would also invest billions to “elevate” the teaching
profession, through teacher and principal residencies and early-career
mentoring programs. Half of the funding would go to historically black
colleges and universities and other institutions that serve ethnic
minorities.

All of this would cost about $315 billion, her campaign says, and
would be paid for through an estate tax.

* Harris also supports collective bargaining rights for teachers in
all states.

Here’s one other, non-teacher highlight in her plan:

* She wants to require businesses to obtain an equal pay
certification that proves they’re not paying women less than men for
doing the same work.

BETO O’ROURKE

 
O’Rourke has a massive labor platform that carefully lays out his
plan to boost union membership rates.

* He wants to guarantee collective bargaining rights for all workers,
including government employees, domestic workers, and farmworkers.
* He’s a believer in sectoral bargaining, which makes it easier
for workers and their unions to negotiate with multiple employers in
an industry.
* O’Rourke wants to strengthen the “joint employer” standard
so that corporations can’t use outsourcing and franchising to avoid
bargaining with them. Unionized workers would be able to bargain with
firms that are not their direct employers but still have power over
their working conditions (like McDonald’s workers who are employed
by a franchise, but whose work is heavily controlled by the
corporation).
* He wants to crack down on the misclassification of gig workers and
other workers as independent contractors. O’Rourke plans to tackle
misclassification as one of the top enforcement priorities of his
Labor Department, and says he supports turning the “ABC test” into
law, which would presume workers are employees unless their employers
can prove otherwise (similar to California’s AB 5 bill
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* Establish wage boards in industries with low union membership to
deliver immediate wage gains.
* Restore the Obama-era overtime rule. The Obama administration
proposed raising the salary threshold that entitles workers to
overtime pay — time and a half for work over 40 hours a week —
from less than $24,000 to around $50,000
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The Trump administration is now seeking to replace the Obama rule with
one raising the threshold to less than $36,000.

BERNIE SANDERS

Sanders has done perhaps more than any candidate to move Democrats
toward more progressive labor policies. He sponsored the Raise the
Wage Act and came out with a dramatic labor platform last month.

As Vox’s Tara Golshan explains
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rebuilding union membership is central to Sanders’s platform. His
plan outlines a series of executive orders and bills that aim to
strengthen union membership, punish employers who engage in
union-busting practices, and raise wages and benefits.

Here’s what Sanders is proposing to do, without Congress:

* End federal contracts with employers that pay workers less than $15
an hour without benefits, pay executives more than 150 times more than
average workers, and hire workers to replace striking workers or
outsources jobs.
* Put a moratorium on pension cuts.

Much of Sanders’s plan, like many other candidates’ plans, would
require legislation. That includes:

* Creation of a sectoral collective bargaining system where boards
set minimum standards for an entire industry, including minimum pay
and benefits
* Giving all government employees the right to unionize
* Banning at-will employment, which allows businesses to fire
employees at any time and for any reason. This would require companies
to fire employees for a “just cause.”
* Require companies to begin negotiating with a union within 10 days
of receiving a request, setting up a system of both mediation and
binding arbitration if employers try to drag their feet on negotiating
a first contract.
* Repeal the provision in the Taft-Hartley Act that allows states to
pass “right to work” laws. Twenty-eight states have these laws on
the books, allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues,
ultimately weakening the union representation.
* Codify the BROWNING-FERRIS JOINT-EMPLOYER STANDARD
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an Obama-era National Labor Relations Board decision that redefined
who technically “employs” US workers by acknowledging an employee
can have more than one employer (for example, a temp agency and the
company contracting with it could both be one temp worker’s
employer), and therefore can participate in collective bargaining.
* Make it easier for workers to strike. First, the plan gives
federal workers the right to strike. Currently, while federal
employees are allowed to form a union, they aren’t allowed to
strike. The plan supports a ban on employers permanently replacing
striking workers. It also backs workers who want to participate in a
secondary boycott to pressure their employers around clients or
suppliers.

ELIZABETH WARREN

 
So far, Warren’s labor platform focuses on fixing international
trade, just like President Donald Trump’s did. Unlike Trump,
however, Warren has a detailed proposal to boost US manufacturing
without starting trade wars.

While the US economy and US businesses have benefitted from free
trade, it has also wiped out hundreds of thousands of union jobs in
the US as manufacturers moved factories abroad.

Warren’s plan focuses on investing a lot more money in research and
development of green technology. Here are the highlights:

* She wants to manage the value of the dollar to make it cheaper for
foreign markets to buy American goods.
* She plans to change the way companies use federally funded
research. Under her plan, companies could no longer use
taxpayer-funded research to develop products that will be manufactured
overseas (Warren cites the iPhone as an example). And some of the
profits generated from the research would be reinvested in domestic
manufacturing and worker training programs.
* Warren wants to increase spending on federal apprenticeship
program by a lot — from about $200 million
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to $20 billion over 10 years.
* She wants to create a new federal department, called the
Department of Economic Development, which would focus on investing in
rural communities and smaller cities.
* Warren plans to invest $2 trillion over the next 10 years in green
research and manufacturing, as part of the Green New Deal.
* She also promised to use executive orders to help improve the work
conditions for women and people of color. That includes denying
federal contracting opportunities to companies with poor track records
on diversity and equal pay, banning companies that want federal
contracts from using forced arbitration and noncompete clauses that
restrict workers’ rights, and banning_ _contractors from asking
applicants for past salary information and criminal histories.

The labor supporters

JOE BIDEN

Despite his brand as a working man’s man, Biden’s labor platform
is hardly revolutionary. It’s short and simple:

* He supports a $15 federal minimum wage.
* He wants to stop companies from classifying low-wage workers as
managers in order to avoid paying them the overtime they’ve earned.
* He wants to make it easier for workers to form unions and
collectively bargain.
* He suggests banning noncompete clauses in employment contracts
that make it hard for employees to find better jobs.
* He wants to ease occupational licensing requirements.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

Klobuchar has one of the vaguest labor platforms of the candidates who
qualified for the third debate. Here’s all it says about workers’
rights on her campaign website:

As the granddaughter of an iron ore miner and the daughter of a union
teacher and a union newspaperman, Amy will bring one clear but SIMPLE
GUIDE
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to the White House: When unions are strong, our country is strong. As
President, she’ll STAND UP
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against attempts to weaken our unions. That means achieving real labor
law reform, ensuring free and fair union elections, protecting
collective bargaining rights, rolling back Right to Work laws, and
making it easier — and not harder — for workers to join unions.

In June, Klobuchar did release a list of executive actions
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she would take in her first 100 days as president, which includes many
that would make it easier for workers to join labor unions. For
example:

* She would require federal contractors to pay no less than $15 an
hour to their employees
* She would reinstate the Obama-era overtime rule, which would
expand the number of workers eligible for overtime pay.
* Klobuchar will direct the FTC to develop rule that would bar
companies from making low-wage workers sign non-compete clauses.
* She would direct the Labor Department to stop fighting efforts to
make businesses disclose detailed salary information, including
employee pay for workers of different races and genders.
* Klobuchar supports reinstating an Obama-era standard of the
join-employer rule, which recognizes that employees may have more than
one employer that is responsible for their working conditions.
* Klobuchar will also restore an a rule rescinded by President Trump
requiring companies to publicly disclose when they hire consultants to
counter workers’ efforts to unionize.

ANDREW YANG

Yang is enthusiastic about equal pay and paid time off but makes no
mention of labor unions in his platform. Here are the highlights:

* He wants to pay federal workers who are performing the same job the
same salary.
* He wants to work with states to implement salary disclosure laws.
* He’ll require federal contractors to disclose salary information
for their employees (they already do this) and will ban companies that
don’t follow equal pay rules.
* He wants to pilot studies to see if different policies result in
more equitable hiring and pay in the federal workforce (however, the
pay gap is actually more of a problem in the private sector than in
the federal government).
* He wants to require employers to offer at least six to nine months
of paid family leave.
* Yang plans to create a tax refund of up to $1,000 to help cover
the cost of moving expenses for any Americans relocating for work.
* He wants to reevaluate professional licenses and remove the
requirement that federal contracts go to people with those licenses
are deemed unnecessary.
* Yang promises to work with state licensure boards to increase the
mobility of professional licenses from state to state.
* He wants to require employers to give full-time workers at least
four weeks of paid time off, except for new companies less than nine
years old and small companies with fewer than 50 employees.

_Update: this article has been updated to reflect O’Rourke’s
support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, the Paycheck
Fairness Act and the Healthy Families Act and to include executive
actions Klobuchar has promised to take._

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