The Hill - 05-06-2015  -  The strain from Modesta Toribio’s retail job weighed down her life. Despite working full-time as a cashier in Brooklyn, Modesta struggled to pay for rent, food, or transportation. The bills added up quickly. Taking the day off to care for a sick child meant risking losing her job. Going to school at night was not an option, and she could not arrange for steady childcare because her schedule changed every week.

Modesta’s story is not unique. It is the story of countless strivers who work to sustain their families, but collide against structural barriers that keep them from making ends meet.

In this case, Modesta and her co-workers took action, organized and won concessions from their boss. It was not easy – their boss initially retaliated by cutting their hours. But, the workers gained momentum, and eventually they won better pay and better treatment.

For millions of others, though, they still do not have the dignity of a good job.

That is why the Center for Popular Democracy is proud to have launched an ambitious campaign to win good wages, benefits and opportunity for all workers with the Center for Community Change, Jobs with Justice and Working Families Organization. Named Putting Families First, the campaign will advance the audacious idea that every American should and can have access to a good job.

It’s an effort undertaken with a sense of urgency. We know that good jobs and access to them for all cannot be achieved without confronting the deep history and continuing reality of racism and sexism in America, particularly as they play out in the labor market.

As such, we propose five straightforward and commonsense tenets:

• Guaranteeing good wages and benefits.
• Investing resources on a large scale to restart the economy in places of concentrated poverty.
• Taxing concentrated wealth.
• Valuing our families and the work of women who care for children and elders
• Building a green economy.
  

What stands between us and an economy that works for everyone are rules that unfairly favor the greedy few because they are written by politicians beholden to wealthy special interests. But workers and families who are working together for change know well that rules written by the few can be re-written by the many.

Workers around the country are launching over 100 campaigns that embody an ambitious jobs agenda that includes everyone, elevating demands that speak to the reality of people throughout our country.

One example: making high quality child care available to all working parents, raising wages and benefits for the millions of women who work in early childhood education and care fields, changing the state and federal revenue models to make childcare more accessible, and providing financial support to unpaid caregivers.

Ensuring that all working families have access to quality, affordable childcare – and that the jobs in that industry provide living wages and good benefits – is crucial to women’s economic stability, especially women of color who are the vast majority of workers in this sector.

Winning these campaigns will make a huge difference for Modesta and her family, and for millions of families in this country who are struggling to make ends meet.

The reality is that there is bold action happening in every corner of this country. Whether we are talking about fast food workers striking across the country, or immigrant workers winning policies against wage theft, or entire communities organizing to win ballot initiatives to enact paid sick days and better wages.         

The American public is thirsty for a visible effort to create real, good, dignified jobs for everyone.

We are supporting important local fights that will produce very real change in the lives of workers. And we are changing the broader frame in which those fights are waged. We are not tinkering at the margins. We have our eyes set on transforming the country through campaigns in 41 states – campaigns that grow every day.

We are setting out to challenge the orthodoxies of both parties to focus on the real problem: the need to create jobs and improve wages.

Like Modesta and her co-workers, we are coming together to stand up for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and for America. We have a vision of honoring the dignity of work, and the dignity of the people who work. We believe that we can do better, but that we will have to challenge those who are stealing our wages, limiting our ability to sustain our families and destroying our planet in order to do so.

Putting Families First will change the national conversation about work and about greed, starting where it matters most: in our states.  It will enable us to live up to our collective responsibility to create the country that we want our children to live in.

Archila is co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.

Source: The Hill