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More than a Paycheck
Amid a record 77,640 new COVID-19 cases yesterday and historic
levels of long-term
unemployment, US
economic recovery could be in jeopardy without immediate
intervention.
Extending unemployment benefits is
a necessary first step. But as Omidyar Network principal and Roosevelt
board member Joelle Gamble argues
in a WIRED UK op-ed, we must also build a better labor
market.
“US lawmakers should continue to
provide ample benefits for workers hurt by this pandemic, while also
focusing on both improving the quality of workplaces and making sure
that workers have a voice within them,” she writes. “If the US is ever
to achieve the faster economic recovery that other advanced nations
are enjoying, lawmakers must recognise that for most Americans, work
is about so much more than a paycheck.”
Worker Rights as Industrial Policy
“Though industrial policy and labor
policy have often been conceptualized as two different domains, this
division is unhelpful and unnecessary,” Roosevelt Fellow Darrick
Hamilton and New America Senior Fellow Cassandra Lyn Robertson write
in an American
Prospect op-ed. “Centering
worker livelihoods in industrial policy through an Economic Bill of
Rights is one step toward reframing what a healthy economy looks like.
The post–New Deal era shows that we can have an economy that serves
the worker without sacrificing economic growth overall.”
Read
on.
For more from Hamilton, watch his
appearance at Bloomberg Equality’s virtual briefing,
“COVID-19
Exposed: The Quest for Equity.”
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