Last week, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) along with 16 other Democratic Senators penned a letter addressed to President Barack Obama calling on him to sign a Model Employer Executive Order. The Huffington Post writes –
The Fight for $15 labor movement has found some high-profile allies in the U.S. Senate, and now they’re asking President Barack Obama to get on board.
In a letter to the White House led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday, 18 senators, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), asked Obama to issue a “model employer” executive order, which would give contracting preference to firms that pay a living wage, offer health care and sick leave, and guarantee union rights for workers.
The New York Times had this to say about signing a Model Employer Executive Order –
[President Obama] should do so without delay. At stake is not only the living standard of a large workforce. At stake is also Mr. Obama’s ability to lead by example.
As the letter points out, Mr. Obama has praised profitable companies like Costco as model employers to be emulated by others because they pay well and respect the right of workers to form unions. He would drive his point home by issuing an executive order that commits the government to contract only with such model employers.
According to the letter, “the federal government continues to be America’s largest low-wage job creator, subsidizing poverty level wages through taxpayer financed contracts, loans and grants with private companies.”
That’s right. Our own government is playing an outsized role in America’s race to the bottom. Jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class for millions of hard working Americans are now keeping them in poverty.
If we get involved, this could change right now. The Executive Order the Senators are calling for would invest our taxpayer dollars to in companies that commit to creating good jobs and to rebuilding America’s middle class.
Thank you for standing up to rebuild America’s middle class.