In an interview with Vox last week, Labor Secretary Tom Perez declared that “executive action can be transformational.”

History proves him right.

This year America celebrates the 50th Anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s landmark employment executive order, which directed companies doing business with the federal government to be model employers by implementing affirmative action and non-discrimination policies.

With the stroke of the pen, LBJ leveraged taxpayer dollars to open the doors to good-paying jobs for millions of American women and minorities, and by doing so, forever transformed America’s segregated workplaces.

Unfortunately, these taxpayer-funded jobs no longer provide a reliable path to the middle class for women and minorities. In fact, the federal government is now America’s leading creator of low-wage jobs in the private sector, keeping more workers in poverty than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined.

That’s why Good Jobs Nation is calling on the Administration to use its executive authority to help low-wage federal contract workers reach the American Dream. Like LBJ, the President can make sure the U.S. Government only does business with model employers that pay a living wage of at least $15 an hour, provide decent benefits and respect the rights of workers to organize a union.

The New York Times Editorial Board agrees.

“In 1965, in a nation torn by racial strife, President Johnson signed an executive order mandating nondiscrimination in employment by government contractors. Now, as President Obama has observed, the nation is divided by a different threat: widening income inequality. He could respond much as Mr. Johnson did — with an executive order aimed, this time, at raising the pay of millions of poorly paid employees of government contractors.”
That would be – in the words of Secretary Perez – “transformational.”

LEARN HOW PRESIDENT OBAMA CAN HELP AMERICA’S LOW-WAGE CONTRACT WORKERS

Read our Platform: More than the Minimum: The President’s Unfinished Agenda

Watch our Video: Takin’ It To The Streets