A Compact for American Workers to Share This Labor Day

Running on the following Domestic Compact for America is a winning election strategy for candidates at the local, state, and national levels.

Most of these long-overdue programs are supported by both liberal and conservative families who live, work, and raise their children, facing unaddressed necessities of life and livelihoods.

Labor Day celebrations should be about more than department store sales and clambakes. America’s labor unions, at both the national and local levels, should circulate this agenda widely on Labor Day, because it is also a Compact for American Workers.

This agenda is being sent to Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO (see the letter sent to her on August 27, 2024), and to the presidents of other major unions, including those representing postal workers, flight attendants, electrical workers, autoworkers, steelworkers, service workers, nurses, textile workers, and agricultural workers.

You might ask yourself: How many of these protections and benefits is US President Donald Trump opposing? These are good yardsticks by which to compare his deceptive rhetoric with his misdeeds.

The basic question is, whose side are you on? The key elements of the Compact are:

1. Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to at least $15 per hour, benefiting 25 million workers.
2. Raising all the Social Security benefits, frozen for over 45 years, paying for it by increasing the Social Security tax on the wealthy, benefiting over 60 million elderly. This was supported by about 200 House Democrats in 2022 but was blocked by the Democratic Speaker from going to the floor. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), the bill’s champion, can provide further explanation.
3. Restoring taxes on the very under-taxed super rich and corporations (85% approval).
4. Establishing a children’s tax credit, cutting child poverty in half, with over 60 million children benefiting. Very popular with parents regardless of their political party affiliations.
5. Instituting Medicare for All, safer, more efficient, and much less stressful than our current approach to healthcare.
6. Cracking down on corporate crooks stealing consumer dollars, wages, and worker pensions.
7. Adopting social safety nets long available in Western Europe and Canada.
8. Passing labor law reforms put forth decades ago. (See my column on Taft Hartley at Nader.org)
9. Investing in crumbling public services and infrastructures.
10. Paying for the above by restoring taxes on the very under-taxed super rich and large corporations and by ending huge corporate welfare giveaways and debloating the runaway, unaudited military budget.

Why has the Democratic Party declined to lead with such an agenda, which has been proposed for years by various citizen groups? (See winningamerica.net.)

One reason is special interest campaign money. Another is that the Democratic Party contracts out many of its campaigns to corporate-conflicted consulting firms that have long pushed weak messaging that leads voters to keep wondering what the party stands for. These consulting firms know the answer—have the party do what is necessary to outraise the GOP in campaign contributions from corporate PACs, the super wealthy, and Wall Street titans.

When the labor union chiefs just write campaign checks to the Democratic Party without demanding an authentic, publicly visible agenda for workers, the pressure is off the party’s leadership to cease being a corporate party or to recruit younger leaders to provide needed energy from the Democratic National Committee down to the grassroots. Without this energy, there is no serious effort to mobilize informed voters who demand these changes and overdue redirections. (See Roots Action, founded by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon.)

Here is to a more vibrant, respectful LABOR DAY.

For more information about what workers can do to advance their interests, see my book Civic Self-Respect—Chapter 2: “I, the Worker.”