Giving Compass' Take:

• Kate Bahn details an agenda to rebalance the economy towards fair worker treatment and racial equality.

• How could supporting this agenda influence others' responses? How might this economic agenda reduce racial inequities within social and political factions?

• Learn how to join the effort to tackle pervasive racial injustices in the economy.

Harvard University’s Labor and Worklife Program, led by Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs of Harvard Law School, recently launched its “clean slate for worker power” agenda addressing the dual crises of economic and political inequality in the United States.

The clean slate agenda proposes graduated representation, which ranges from workplace monitors to partial union representation to exclusive representation. The agenda also establishes a path toward sectoral bargaining based on expanding prevailing wage laws, where the government establishes a floor for wages and benefits in a sector where a set threshold of collective bargaining coverage density is reached. This model would expand both coverage and equity, with easier representation within workplaces and more equity between workplaces.

The clean slate agenda also includes platforms to address the exclusion of certain types of workers from representation, such as incarcerated workers and workers with disabilities who have limited protections under current labor law, and the expansion of the labor movement tool box to include a broader range of union organizing and collective action such as strikes. The agenda also calls for the support of workers to engage in our democracy such as mandating paid time off for civic duties, including voting.

These new proposals in the clean slate agenda would shape the economic forces that determine individual and collective well-being so that the concerns of today’s economy, such as rising monopsony power and persistent racial inequity, are addressed through a rebalancing of power toward the workers who contribute to economic growth. The best evidence-based economic and other social science research underpins the importance of this initiative.

Read the full article about 'cleaning the slate' for workers' rights by Kate Bahn at Equitable Growth.