Reforms to Support Work
Our economy is changing. We have left the time when people work for one company for their whole life. We have entered a time when workers are certain to work for many employers over the course of their career, and may in fact have many careers.
We need work policies that make this reality easier for workers. That includes increasing wage security. It means better health care protection. It means protection for the basic facts of life — we all get sick, some of us are blessed with children. It means a simple ability to migrate retirement plans. And it means policies that protect against discrimination.
I would push for an increase in the minimum wage. I would fight to make health insurance more easily and cheaply portable. I would push to enact paid family leave. I would push pay equity legislation for women. And I would support efforts to update the protections given to labor unions, to make them more meaningful and effective in the modern economy.
These changes will be fought by the most powerful economic and political forces in our economy today. Before The First Reform, they may not be possible. But after that reform, we will have a Congress responsive to the people, because as Madison put it, we will have a Congress “dependent on the people alone.”
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