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Labor and Employment

Our top priority is meaningful full employment.  

All workers must have the right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike for fair wages, benefits, and safe working conditions.  We support public employees’ rights to speedy mediation and binding arbitration of labor disputes.  

We favor strengthening OSHA and other safety agencies to ensure enforcement of workers' rights to a safe workplace.
 
We oppose right-to-work legislation.  Hiring strikebreakers must be prohibited.
 
Workers are entitled to a living wage with benefits.

We support full equity in pay and benefits.

We support equitable ratios of management to labor pay.

We advocate national industrial policies to ensure thriving basic industries.  We favor public investment in research and development of new technologies and worker retraining for nonmilitary domestic jobs.

Management and labor should cooperate for competitive success of U.S.-owned businesses.

We oppose American businesses establishing plants in foreign countries with the express purpose of evading taxes, taking advantage of sub-standard wages and circumventing environmental protection laws. 

We support tariffs against nations where unfair conditions impede American exports.

Pension funds must be responsibly managed and strictly safeguarded.  Employees and retirees must be informed regularly of anticipated retirement benefits.  No employer should have access to pension fund assets.

Workers owed wages by a bankrupt business must have first claim to the business’ assets.

Businesses must be required to give sufficient notification of job cutbacks and plant closings to help communities and workers adjust.

Unemployment compensation should include health insurance and, in long recessions, automatic extension of benefits.