Build Back Better For America, By America

Although we’ve come to associate Labor Day with friends, family, and barbecues, we have to understand what exactly it commemorates and its importance to our current political realities. The labor movement fought hard for more than a century to secure the basic tenets of our working lives — safer jobs where you can expect a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Many of the things that we take for granted today would not exist without a committed labor movement constantly pushing back against the corruption and exploitation of our modern economy. The prohibition on child labor, the 40-hour work week, the weekend, among others, are advancements demanded in the face of tremendous power and opposition.

The fight for these rights wasn’t easy. Nor was it quick. It took years of work — and countless setbacks — to build up power for workers. And that fight is far from over.

Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen an erosion of America’s social contract with its workers. Workers are receiving a smaller share of the wealth they create and income inequality greater than at any point since the Census Bureau started tracking it in the first half of the 20th century. Wages for typical workers have stagnated while compensation for CEO’s has skyrocketed. Healthcare is inaccessible for millions of workers. At the same time, workers–especially those in frontline roles–are now forced to contend with a deadly pandemic and the increasing effects of climate change — without seeing the conditions of their lives improve by very much at all. Without the proper investments, reforms, and policies much of the American working class will be relegated to a permanent underclass in our society, performing the functions necessary for a thriving economy but seeing none of the benefits or mobility previously available.

There is a path forward. We can build a clean, equitable economy that mitigates the effects of climate change and provides good-paying, safe, and healthy jobs to the workers who will build our clean energy systems, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and manufacture the materials and components we need for a clean future. With the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the Senate and House moving forward with the build back better budget, we are two major steps closer to a comprehensive reinvestment in our nation’s physical, natural and social infrastructure, and in the workers whose labor makes it run. If we can pass these investments with high-road labor and domestic content standards — and target the investment communities and workers who most need it — we can build back our economy to be cleaner, stronger, and more equitable.

To build a future where workers are valued and their rights are upheld, we must also pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, legislation that reforms of our country’s labor laws — many of which are more than half a century old — that aims to strengthen workers’ rights to organizing and bargain collectively with their employers for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. One of the most essential ways to reverse our nation’s schockingy high levels of income inequality is to level the playing field between workers and employers, which has been tilted dramatically in favor of employers for decades.

It is critical that working people are front and center as we create a new economy: one that values our work, our families, our communities, and our environment.

Workers have been left behind, a stark reality that was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate change continues to worsen and create increasingly extreme weather patterns. In many parts of the United States critical infrastructure is crumbling. The most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of these crises, and that includes the vast majority of the American working class. It is critical that working people are front and center as we create a new economy: one that values our work, our families, our communities, and our environment. This Labor Day, our political leaders should show solidarity with working people across this country and pass the bold investments our workers and communities need to build back better.

Jason Walsh is the Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance.