Our Shared Vision for Workers' Rights and Economic Justice

A Time for Bold Vision

In this moment when the current administration is attacking workers and undercutting labor rights, it is not enough for labor to only oppose what is being done. We need a proactive vision for the future — one that charts a clear path toward justice, dignity, and prosperity for all working people. We need to empower working people across race and class through collective action, union power, and economic justice throughout Minneapolis.

Workers across our state and nation face unprecedented challenges: stagnant wages while corporate profits soar, attacks on our fundamental rights to organize and bargain collectively, the erosion of due process protections, and systematic efforts to continuously divide working people against one another. We refuse to accept a future where working families struggle while a wealthy few prosper. We reject policies that tear apart immigrant communities, discriminate against all workers, defund essential public services, and treat workers as disposable.

Instead, we offer a bold vision of what our state and country can and should be: a place where every worker has dignity, security, and the power to build a better life. This vision requires action from both employers and government — partners who must recognize that strong, thriving workplaces and communities benefit everyone.

What We Call on Employers to Do

Protect Organizing Rights and Collective Bargaining

Employers should protect organizing rights and collective bargaining even as the current administration fights against union rights, undercuts the NLRB, and does whatever they can to strip union representation from workers. In this hostile environment where federal protections for workers' rights are being systematically dismantled, responsible employers have an opportunity to demonstrate their true commitment to their workforce by proactively and productively engaging with their workers. This means respecting workers' right to organize without interference, recognizing unions when workers choose them, bargaining in good faith, refraining from the union-busting tactics, opting into project labor agreements, labor peace agreements, and prevailing wage, and collaborating with labor to meet the needs of their employees.

Honor Workers' Right to Solidarity

Employers should recognize workers' right to honor picket lines, supporting solidarity between workers across different workplaces and industries. When workers respect each other's struggles and refuse to cross picket lines, they strengthen the collective power of all working people. Employers should understand that supporting worker solidarity builds stronger communities and ultimately creates more stable, respectful workplace relationships. This means allowing workers to honor picket lines without disciplinary action and recognizing that solidarity between workers is a fundamental right that benefits the entire labor movement.

Prioritize People Over Profits in Essential Services

Employers must adopt staffing ratios in medical and educational institutions, prioritizing patient care, student learning, and worker safety over profit margins. Healthcare workers and educators are burning out at unprecedented rates because institutions prioritize cost-cutting over adequate staffing. Safe staffing ratios ensure that nurses can provide quality patient care, teachers can give students the attention they deserve, and all workers can perform their jobs safely and effectively. When employers invest in proper staffing, they invest in the quality of essential services that our communities depend on.

Protect All Workers from Immigration System Abuse

Employers must refuse coordination with immigration enforcement and bar immigration officials from workplace access except when legally mandated, protecting all workers from fear and intimidation. When workers live in fear of deportation, it creates a climate where all workers' rights are undermined. Employers who truly value their workforce will create safe workplaces where every employee can focus on their job without fear of immigration raids or workplace intimidation. This protection strengthens the entire workplace by ensuring that all workers can report safety violations, wage theft, and discrimination without fear of retaliation through immigration enforcement.

Ensure Inclusive Healthcare for All Workers

Employers should provide comprehensive access to gender-affirming care in employer health plans, ensuring dignity and healthcare access for all workers. Healthcare is a human right, and that includes the right to gender-affirming care. Employers who truly value diversity and inclusion will ensure their health plans provide comprehensive coverage that meets the needs of all workers, regardless of gender identity. This commitment to inclusive healthcare demonstrates that employers value the whole person, not just their labor, and creates workplaces where all workers can bring their authentic selves to work.

Protect and Expand Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives

Employers must protect and expand diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, fostering workplaces where all workers can thrive regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or background. True workplace equality requires ongoing commitment to dismantling systems of oppression and creating environments where all workers have equal opportunities to succeed. This means actively working to eliminate pay gaps, providing equal opportunities for advancement, creating inclusive hiring practices, and building workplace cultures where every worker feels valued and respected. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives aren't just good for workers — they create stronger, more innovative, and more productive workplaces. 

What We Call on Government to Do

Raise Wages to Living Standards

Government must raise the minimum wage to a living wage that allows working people to support their families. There is something fundamentally wrong with our economy when the rich keep getting richer while working people work longer hours just to make ends meet. Despite year after year of increased productivity, we are not sharing in the fruits of our labor. The labor movement has always advocated for wages high enough to allow working people to support their families. We must restore the minimum wage to a living wage.

Invest in Job-Creating Infrastructure Programs

Government must invest in comprehensive, job-creating infrastructure programs that keep our infrastructure safe and up-to-date while building the local economy by hiring local union workers. America's infrastructure is crumbling — our roads, bridges, water systems, broadband networks, and transit systems desperately need investment and modernization. Large-scale infrastructure investment creates good-paying union jobs that can't be outsourced, stimulates local economies, and builds the foundation for long-term economic growth. These programs should prioritize hiring local workers, particularly through union hiring halls and apprenticeship programs that provide pathways to middle-class careers. When government invests in infrastructure through union labor, it ensures that public dollars create quality jobs while building the reliable infrastructure that businesses and communities depend on. Infrastructure investment is economic development that benefits everyone — creating immediate employment opportunities while building the systems that support prosperity for generations to come.

Address Extreme Executive Compensation

Government should implement executive compensation caps limiting CEO pay to reasonable multiples of median worker wages, ending the era of extreme inequality. The massive gap between executive compensation and worker wages represents a fundamental failure of our economic system. When CEOs earn hundreds of times more than their average worker, it reflects priorities that value the extremely wealthy over the people who actually create value. Reasonable executive compensation caps would help redirect corporate resources toward worker compensation, research and development, and long-term sustainability rather than enriching a small group of executives. 

Guarantee Work-Life Balance

Government must guarantee universal paid vacation, holidays, and family leave for all workers, recognizing that rest and family time are fundamental rights, not privileges. Every worker deserves time to rest, spend time with family, and participate in their communities. Countries around the world guarantee paid vacation time as a basic right, and the United States should follow suit. Universal paid vacation and holidays would improve worker health, strengthen families, and create more productive and satisfied workforces. Work-life balance isn't a luxury — it's essential for human dignity and wellbeing.

Support Workers' Right to Strike

Government should provide unemployment insurance for striking workers. Collective action — such as going on strike or even threatening to go on strike — is still the most effective way for workers to improve their pay and conditions. However, a strike is a tactic of last resort because it often means no pay for workers and families. Even though unemployment insurance payments don't come anywhere near a livable income, it would allow a worker to put food on the table and meet the bare minimum of family expenses until they return to work. Our nation's labor laws remain heavily skewed in favor of employers — who can temporarily replace workers, stall negotiations, make threats, or cut off healthcare. It's time to balance the scales between workers and management by ensuring that workers can access unemployment insurance while on strike.

Protect Workers' Rights on Public Projects

Government must require prevailing wage and labor peace agreements on all publicly-funded projects, guaranteeing workers' rights to organize without employer interference on taxpayer-funded work. When taxpayers fund construction and infrastructure projects, workers on those projects should receive fair wages and have their rights protected. Prevailing wage standards ensure that public projects don't undercut local wage standards, while labor peace agreements protect workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Public money should support good jobs and strong communities, not subsidize employers who exploit workers or interfere with organizing rights.

Transition to Single-Payer Healthcare

Government must transition to a single-payer healthcare system. Our goal is to move toward a single-payer system, like Medicare for All, that provides universal coverage using a social insurance model while retaining the critical role of workers' health plans. Any such system must guarantee everyone can get the health services they need without exclusions or financial barriers to care, and with access to high-quality doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers. It must not diminish the hard-fought benefits union members have won for themselves and all working people, and must include long-term care for all. A true single-payer system should retain the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system as the primary direct provider of fully integrated care to veterans, and provide multiemployer and other worker health plans the opportunity to administer core health benefits and to provide supplemental benefits, each on a fully tax-advantaged basis. It must keep a strong federal role without shifting costs to states. 

Fully Fund Public Education

Government must fully fund public education at all levels, from early childhood through higher education, ensuring quality education is accessible to all. Education is the foundation of a just society and a strong economy, yet decades of disinvestment have left our schools underfunded and our teachers overworked. Every child deserves access to quality early childhood education, well-funded K-12 schools with adequate resources and support staff, and affordable higher education that doesn't burden students with crushing debt. When we invest in education, we invest in our future workforce, our communities, and our democracy. Public education funding should ensure reasonable class sizes, comprehensive support services, modern facilities and fair compensation for educators at all levels. 

Protect Due Process in Immigration

Government must protect due process in the immigration system, ensuring fair hearings and legal representation for all individuals. Our immigration system should be built on principles of justice and human dignity, not fear and punishment. Every person in immigration proceedings deserves the right to a fair hearing, access to legal representation, and the opportunity to present their case before an impartial judge. Due process protections strengthen our entire legal system by ensuring that all people, regardless of immigration status, are treated with dignity and have their rights respected. When we protect due process for immigrants, we protect the constitutional principles that safeguard all of our rights.

Our Vision for the Future

This vision represents more than a set of policy proposals — it's a roadmap toward a society that values the dignity and contributions of all working people. When we embrace these principles, we create communities where families can thrive, where workers have power and voice, and where prosperity is shared by all who contribute to our collective success.

The labor movement has always been at the forefront of progress, fighting for the eight-hour day, workplace safety, civil rights, and countless other advances that benefit all working people. Today, we continue that tradition by offering a bold vision for the future — one that rejects the false choice between economic growth and worker rights, and instead recognizes that strong workers and strong communities are the foundation of a strong economy. 

Together, we can build a future where every worker has dignity, security, and the power to build a better life. This is our shared vision, and this is our call to action.

Note:

This is a living document that was developed through collaboration with a wide spectrum of unions representing workers across industries. The vision outlined here emerges from the collective wisdom and experience of union members who understand firsthand what workers need to thrive. As conditions change and new challenges emerge, this document will continue to evolve to reflect the dynamic needs of working people and the ongoing struggle for economic justice.