Opportunity and Justice for Workers

• Strengthen collective bargaining and support state and local efforts to protect workers. After decades without significant reforms of our labor laws, coupled with attacks  at the federal and state levels, it’s harder than ever for workers to collectively bargain. As a result, today the percentage of workers who are union members stands at 11 percent overall and just six percent for private sector workers. As president, Cory would make it easier, not harder, for workers to engage in collective bargaining. He would fight for the PRO Act, to strengthen protections for workers’ right to organize a union, protect employees’ right to strike, and ban anti-union “right-to-work” laws; the Workplace Democracy Act, which would allow workers to form unions with a majority sign up; and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would strengthen the rights of public sector workers that were eroded by the misguided Janus decision. Cory would also protect and build on federal labor law so that states and local governments can innovate by making the National Labor Relations Act the floor, not the ceiling for labor rights.
• Ensure that all workers have opportunities for higher wages and meaningful benefits. Practices like worker misclassification and excessive subcontracting and franchising agreements are being used to deprive ever greater numbers of workers of their rights and push more risks and costs on to workers and governments. In particular, misclassification among “gig economy” workers as independent contractors has meant that these workers have no right to minimum wage, overtime, anti-discrimination or other protections. Cory believes that all workers deserve rights in their workplace. As president, he would support new rules like the “ABC test” to clarify when workers can be classified as independent contractors and improve enforcement to prevent worker misclassification by providing adequate resources to agencies. Cory would also strengthen “joint employer standards,” which is essential for establishing who workers are able to bargain with and for holding companies appropriately accountable for instances in which they share control over illegal working conditions. These reforms will help ensure that low-income workers, who are disproportionately from communities of color, are able to organize and are covered by critical workplace protections.
• Increase opportunities for worker organizing, including new models like sectoral bargaining. Sectoral bargaining allows workers to organize to raise wages and standards across entire industries. Organizing across multiple employers has a successful history in the U.S. including in the auto, steel, trucking and construction industries, and Cory has stood with Fight for $15 workers as they have fought to raise wages in the fast food industry. As President, Cory would support efforts that build on these models to bring multiple employers across an industry to the table, including through wage boards, that set wage and other workplace benefits and standards. Not only would such models help lift up workers in industries that pay low wages and where there is little or no traditional collective bargaining, it would also reduce firms’ incentives to cut labor costs and help high-road employers compete by leveling the playing field across these industries.
   
• Expand our workforce investment system to include worker organizations and industry-wide training. Cory would work to increase investment in apprenticeships and workforce training programs that partner with unions and worker-led organizations, and expand our existing workforce training programs to include industry-wide sectoral programs that serve the needs of multiple employers in a local labor market. He would also expand training investments where unions and worker organizations are key participants in the programs and have a voice to ensure they meet workers’ needs.
• Make sure federal contracts support good jobs. Taxpayer dollars should support good jobs that pay a living wage, provide good benefits, are safe, and protect the right to organize. As president, Cory would take action to ensure that federal funds, including contracts, grants, and tax incentives, support only responsible companies that follow labor laws and provide good jobs. Jobs funded by taxpayer dollars should pay at least $15 per hour and be covered by prevailing wage and benefits standards, prevent discrimination and enforce equal pay protections; expand access to apprenticeship and paid training; and respect workers’ right to join a union. In addition, Cory’s plan to bring dignity and choice to long-term care includes critical protections and increases Medicaid funding to improve pay for direct care workers. 

• Fight for a $15 minimum wage and overtime protections. Cory is an original cosponsor of the Raise the Wage Act and would fight for a fair minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers by ending the subminimum wage for workers with disabilities, youth workers, and tipped workers- which disproportionately impacts women and people of color. Cory would also update the Trump administration’s overtime standard that has left out over 8 million workers from our nation’s overtime protections and end unfair scheduling practices.
• Restore justice for workers. Often, abusive pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses are buried in the fine print of employment contracts and undermine the right to organize, as well as minimum wage, overtime, anti-discrimination, and safety protections that workers rely on. Cory supports the Restoring Justice for Workers Act, which prohibits mandatory arbitration clauses that deprive workers of their right to pursue justice in court or join in collective legal action for work-related claims.
• Time off when workers are sick or when they need to care for a loved one. The U.S. is the only industrialized country with no national paid family leave policy. Cory would push for passage of the FAMILY Act, so that workers are able to take paid time off when they need to care for themselves or a loved one, like a child, partner, or parent. He also supports efforts to expand paid family and medical leave proposals to help more low-income workers start with higher wage replacement rates. Cory would also fight for workers to be able to earn paid sick time, building on the Healthy Families Act.
• The ability to work without fear of discrimination or harassment. Cory would push for protections from discrimination and to close loopholes that leave workers vulnerable to being fired for who they are, including with the Equality Act, to extend protections to LGBTQ Americans, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Cory would also fight against workplace harassment by pushing for the Be HEARD Act, which would ensure that workplaces have resources to prevent harassment and that all workers — including contractors, interns and trainees — are protected from workplace harassment and discrimination.
• Equal pay for equal work. Women today are only paid about 80 cents for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic, white men. For women of color, the gender pay gap is even greater. As president, Cory would fight to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, and would build on it with new tools to hold companies accountable and close the gender pay gap.
• Reforming our laws to ensure fairness for domestic workers and farm workers. For too long, domestic workers and farm workers have been excluded from some of our labor laws’ basic protections — a legacy of discrimination intentionally excluding communities of color built into our labor laws. Cory would fight to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and Fairness for Farm Workers Act
  
• Strengthening people’s ability to seek better job opportunities. Cory would fight to end practices that unfairly prevent workers from competing for new jobs and translating their skills and experience into higher wages and better benefits, including non-compete and “no-poaching” clauses for low-wage workers. He would also break down barriers to opportunities that often prevent the formerly incarcerated from even being considered for employment. The collateral consequences for Americans with a criminal conviction are like getting a life sentence — affecting their ability to vote, to get housing and, critically, to get back to work. Cory would sign into law his Fair Chance Act to prohibit the federal government and federal contractors from asking job applicants about their criminal history.
• Putting workers on equal footing with shareholders. Decades of attacks on workers rights, lax antitrust enforcement, and corporate practices too often guided by short-term incentives and maximizing of shareholder value have concentrated power and wealth at the top, preventing workers from sharing in the value they create. To help rebalance these trends, Cory would sign into law his Worker Dividend Act, which targets the increasing trend of corporations using profits for stock buybacks instead of using them to raise wages for workers.
• Supporting working families through affordable child care. Working parents across the country are struggling to pay child care costs, and there is no state where the average cost of center-based infant or toddler child care meets the federal definition of affordable (no more than 7 percent of annual household income). Building on the framework of the Child Care for Working Families Act, Cory would fight for legislation to make a sweeping federal investment in child care to make it affordable for all working families. Cory knows that we also need to invest in our child care workers, who on average earn just $11 per hour. That’s why he will support increased funding to raise wages and improve benefits for these workers.
• Give all Americans a shot at a day’s work. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Franklin Roosevelt believed that every American had the right to a job, and that government could ensure that every person who wants to work would be able to. Cory would fight to pass his Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act, the only bill in Congress to pilot a federal jobs guarantee in select areas — because anyone who wants to work in America should be able to do so.  

• Repeal the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest families and largest corporations. Amid negative economic trends for workers, including weak wage growth and record inequality, it is difficult to overstate the missed opportunity of the Trump tax bill. Rather than putting cash in the pockets of working families and people living in poverty, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) added nearly $2 trillion to the deficit to further stack the deck in favor of the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations. The corporate tax rate — slashed even beyond the wildest dreams of large corporations from 35 percent to 21 percent on the pretense that savings would unleash a wave of new jobs, higher wages, and increased capital investment, instead served to enrich corporate shareholders, with over $1 trillion in stock buybacks in 2018 alone. According to a recent report, 60 companies in the Fortune 500 paid no federal taxes at all in 2018, despite billions in profits. Of the bill’s total benefits, more than half went to the wealthiest five percent of households, while just one percent went to the poorest 20 percent. The TCJA also served to widen the already sprawling racial wealth gap: in 2018, the average white household was estimated to receive $2,020 in tax cuts, compared to $970 for Latinx households and $840 for Black households. Cory would repeal these tax cuts, and work to swiftly restructure our tax code to restore justice and support broadly shared economic prosperity.
• Change how we tax investments and level the playing field for those who get their income from work. The federal government taxes investment income at rates far lower than those it applies to the top salaries of American workers. Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at up to 23.8 percent, while wages are taxed at up to 40.8 percent.[1] The preferential tax rates on investment returns overwhelmingly reward the extremely wealthy — 78 percent of the benefit accrues to the richest one percent and 90 percent to the richest five percent. For a household making more than $1 million annually, the average tax savings of the lower rate is more than $145,000 each year, versus just a $70 benefit for a household making between $50,000 and $75,000. 

• Close loopholes that allow the wealthiest households to avoid paying their fair share in taxes, or not pay anything at all:

• Carried interest. Currently, income that flows to the general partner of a private investment fund, known as carried interest, is taxed at a special, lower rate — allowing wealthy investors and hedge-fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than many middle class Americans. Cory is an original co-sponsor of the Carried Interest Fairness Act and as president, would sign it into law.
• “Stepped-up basis” loophole. Under Cory’s plan, the wealthiest Americans would no longer be able to avoid paying taxes on capital gains by simply holding onto assets until death. Instead, death and transfers of assets to other family members or entities would be deemed a realization event. Gifts of appreciated property to charity would be treated as realization events.
• Real estate “like kind exchange” loopholes. Under current law, real estate investors can avoid paying capital gains taxes by using section 1031 “like-kind exchanges,” where they can sell one property that has gains and roll those into the cost basis of a newly acquired real estate investment, deferring the tax.  Under Cory’s plan, these exchanges would be deemed realization events and taxed accordingly.
• Estate tax reform. The Trump tax bill let extremely wealthy households to pass on up to $22.8 million to heirs tax-free — doubling the previous amount. Cory would end this giveaway and restore our estate tax structure to 2009 levels and rates, and add higher rates for extremely large estates.

• Raise the floor for low-wage workers by putting money back in their pockets.