I think our big tent is our greatest strength.
I think public sector workers, our teachers, our firefighters, our home health workers who work for states, they do God’s work. They are some of our most important employees.
A secure retirement is one of the pillars of middle class life. For all too many Americans, however, that pillar needs more support.
The Republican playbook is voter suppression.
Economically Targeted Investing, or ETI, refers to the practice of selecting investments, in part, for their collateral benefits in addition to the investment return for the retirement plan.
Everything has changed in recent decades – the economy, technology, cultural attitudes, the demographics of the workforce, the role of women in society and the structure of the American family. It’s about time our laws caught up. We watch ‘Modern Family’ on television, but we’re still living by ‘Leave It To Beaver’ rules.
I believe the passage of a national paid family and medical leave law is not a question of if, but when. But as is so often the case on important public policy issues, we need states and localities to be the incubators of innovation.
With patience, persistence, and partnership, we can create economic opportunity for every person willing to work hard for it.
Tampa Electric has used apprenticeships since 1978 to make sure its workforce is the best in the business – trained, prepared, and productive. Apprenticeships improve its bottom line and give the company a competitive advantage.
Of all the tough decisions in life, choosing between the job you need and the family you love should not be one of them.
Extending emergency unemployment benefits isn’t just the right thing to do for our families – it’s the smart thing to do for our economy.
For the purposes of the FMLA, marriage will now be determined based on where the couple got married, not on where an employee lives. This is called a ‘place of celebration’ rule.
Misclassification means workers are denied not just minimum wage and overtime but other social safety net protections like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.
There is no price tag on an American life – whether it’s in Florida, Texas, or Puerto Rico.
We can’t understand what we’ve accomplished on civil rights without telling the story of Bayard Rustin. And now, we must write the next chapter in the American civil rights story by drawing strength and inspiration from his moral courage.
It’s a false choice to say we either have job safety or job growth. It’s a false choice to suggest that the only way for a business to survive is to make sure workers have low wages and little or no benefits. There are ample models across this country where we’ve demonstrated the contrary.
My mother fiercely valued education. She entered college the same year I did, in 1979, and graduated eight years later. She was a remarkable role model for all of us.
We need to enact comprehensive immigration reform, to bring people out of the shadows and empower them to more fully and freely participate in their communities and the economy. And we need to invest in our nation’s deteriorating infrastructure – investments that would create jobs and benefit all sectors of the economy.
We have to have a conversation where we bring in all the stakeholders and say, ‘What is the vision of the Democratic Party?’
Talk about the issues that matter most to people.
From the outset, the Obama administration has recognized that building a robust skills infrastructure means building strong partnerships with community colleges.
Historians have often censored civil rights activists’ commitment to economic issues and misrepresented the labor and civil rights movements as two separate, sometimes adversarial efforts. But civil rights and workers’ rights are two sides of the same coin.
Frankly, what we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin.
President Obama has made a minimum wage increase a focal point of his economic agenda.
Here’s the reality: when Hillary Clinton won the nomination, the DNC handed her insufficient and substandard tools for success.
Donald Trump’s vision of America, his nativist vision of America, his fear mongering – that’s what we have to fight.
Our economic future and our energy future are one in the same, and it’s a future America can’t shrink from. We must shape it, just as we’ve always done. We have to protect our planet from the threat of climate change and ensure that workers have the skills to compete for good middle-class jobs.
I’ve talked to several CEOs – from a recycling company in Indiana, a furniture company in Kentucky, a brewing company in Colorado, and more – who believe paying higher wages is both the right thing to do and part of a successful business model.
People have choices. They are going to vote with their feet.
If you’re one car accident away from poverty, you’re on a high wire without a safety net. And that’s a challenging proposition.
Improving veterans’ employment is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise. We work with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, with private sector partners and others.
I met a person on my rural tour in northwest Wisconsin who said to me, ‘I feel politically homeless.’ And we need to re-engage that person.
Costco pays their workers good wages with benefits while selling good products at competitive prices and remaining quite profitable.
How can we say we’re for family values when so many women in the United States have to jeopardize their livelihood to take a few weeks off from work after giving birth? Should a man have to sacrifice his economic security to take care of his sick mother or his wife returning wounded from active duty?
When I travel around the country and talk about the need to raise the minimum wage or expand access to paid leave, I often talk about the need for us to reject false choices.
I happen to think Donald Trump is crazy, but that’s not an economic message.
I consider Keith Ellison a friend.
If the price of a burger goes up 5 cents, and the minimum wage that you have received is going up from $7.25 to $15 an hour – and there have been a number of studies that document just how much the price of a burger might go up if you increase the minimum wage. You match the costs, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.
The United States is one of the few nations on the planet where paid family and medical leave or earned sick time is not the law of the land.
It’s not only inhumane to treat Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens. It’s deeply un-American.
I like to call the Department of Labor the Department of Opportunity, and that means opportunity for everyone – no matter whom you love.
Labor Day 2013 is special. This year marks the centennial of the U.S. Department of Labor – 100 years of working for America’s workers.
There are just way too many people suffering out there.
Misclassification is a serious problem in construction as well as other industries, and it is exacerbated by increasingly fissured employment structures where work is contracted and subcontracted away from the core company.
Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.
The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner – most likely a woman – responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children.
There’s a long bipartisan tradition of civil rights enforcement.
Growing up in Buffalo, I saw shuttered factories that once housed thousands of steel manufacturing jobs. I remember the hollowing-out of the middle class in our community. I witnessed hope turn to hardship as a once-thriving city reckoned with a fast-changing world.
Donald Trump is anathema to America.
Change very often comes to Washington, not from Washington.
From the new hate crimes law to the repeal of DOMA and ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ to the emerging popular support for marriage equality, we are making progress at breakneck speed. As someone who has dedicated most of my career to civil rights law, I am deeply moved by this sea change and proud to have done my part.
You’re more likely to see someone fatally struck by lightning than witness a case of in-person voter fraud.
It was a privilege to serve as the assistant attorney general for civil rights, a role that allowed me to enforce the Civil Rights Act and help make its promise a reality.
We need bold leadership to bring America back to its first principles of diversity inclusion and opportunity for everyone in every ZIP Code, and music is that vehicle to summon our better angels. Music is that vehicle and always has been a vehicle to challenge us to build a better America.
Public service has allowed me to put values my parents taught me into action.
I’ve heard the argument that unemployment benefits somehow act as a disincentive to the long-term unemployed when it comes to looking for work, but the opposite is true. Unemployment Insurance serves as a powerful incentive for people to keep searching for jobs, rather than drop out of the labor force altogether.
You shouldn’t have to win the boss lottery in order to have a little bit of flexibility at work. Raising and supporting a family isn’t just a financial obligation. What’s important isn’t just being able to put food on the dinner table – we want you to be at the dinner table, too.
Hillary Clinton is about ‘we.’ Donald Trump is about ‘me.’
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