One Question: What More Can Joe Biden Do to Help Working People?

LANE WINDHAM

Associate director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University

He can listen. Working people are fed up after forty years of stagnant wages and no support. They’re hitting the picket lines at a historic rate and driving a slow-moving general strike by quitting bad jobs.

Biden can help workers improve those jobs by ensuring their right to form unions. Even without Congressional labor law reform, Biden could sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to remain neutral when workers decide to form a union. This would be a historic check on outsized employer power.

Strikers have decried long and erratic hours. Many employers get away with demanding these punishing schedules by mislabeling front-line workers as managers, thus avoiding paying overtime. Biden could direct the Department of Labor to close this loophole and restore overtime pay to millions.

MARK POCAN

U.S. Representative of Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District

Joe Biden ran for President campaigning that a job is about more than just a paycheck; it’s about dignity and respect. He’s not wrong. You should be proud of the work you do and have rights in the workplace, with the right to unionize being close to the top of that list.

Biden has fought for workers throughout his career. In April, he brought together more than twenty federal agency heads to create the “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment,” aimed at identifying ways the executive branch can support worker power.  

As a union member myself, I also know the value of a union. With Biden’s full support, the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act earlier this year, legislation that protects the basic right to join a union. The next step is for the PRO Act to pass the Senate.

The President and I agree that fighting for working people is important, because we both know a rising tide lifts all boats, not just the yachts of mega-rich CEOs.

AI-JEN POO

Executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance

[Biden could] start with spending a day with a care worker. There are 2.4 million home-care workers across the country, caring for our loved ones who are elderly or disabled and need help getting ready for the day, taking their medications, or preparing meals so they can live a full life with dignity.

If Biden makes time to visit with care workers as he travels across the country, hearing their stories, and witnessing their contributions, the ways we value care workers will continue to expand.

This includes the immigrant care workforce. The Build Back Better framework already includes important first steps to raise wages and strengthen the workforce, and we need to ensure its implementation creates good, family-sustaining jobs. This is an economic, practical, and moral imperative, and it must be part of every conversation about the future of jobs.