A Just Economy for All

The 2024 elections were, in large measure, a referendum on the American economy. Working people who voted for Donald Trump, and gave him the margin of victory, overwhelmingly cited the economy as their reason for doing so.

Working people’s dissatisfaction with the economic legacy of the Biden administration is not hard to understand. After the largest expansion of government programs to help working people in decades—the various Covid-relief packages passed in 2020 and 2021—produced a historic reduction in poverty, the Biden administration and the Democrats were unable or unwilling to extend those programs or make them permanent. The programs that helped millions of working people make it through the pandemic period were thus allowed to expire just as supply-chain issues began to drive up inflation, a situation that corporations were able to exploit to raise prices and make super-profits.

The lack of support from the government and increased prices for groceries and other retail goods followed decades during which working people suffered massive increases in the cost of housing, healthcare and education while wages stagnated. Although real wages have increased in the last few years, especially for the lowest-paid workers, the cumulative effect of inflation on top of the loss of government support and the decades-long increase in the overall cost of living has meant economic pain for most working people.

However, the Trump presidency has offered little relief for working people. None of his administration’s many policy changes have benefitted American workers. Companies are now shifting tariff-related costs to consumers, with inflation again rising. At the same time, American manufacturing employment is flat. Trump’s incoherent tariff policies have resulted in American-assembled cars (which use some raw materials and parts from Canada and Mexico) becoming much more expensive than cars imported from Japan or Germany. The recently-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” extended old and created new tax cuts for billionaires and big business on the backs of steep cuts to Medicaid and food programs for low-income people. Trump’s executive actions and Congressional budget cuts laid off tens of thousands of federal workers, slashed collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands more, and imperiled millions throughout the public, nonprofit, and higher education sectors. And the strongest legacy of President Biden—the most pro-worker National Labor Relations Board in decades—is being swiftly undone.

Trump’s second presidency is also a sharp departure from the traditional, rules-based order of American capitalism, shifting our country into a crony capitalist system, where powerful entities must “pay to play.” His trade policy amounts to extracting tribute from countries, and increasingly corporations. Businesses, law firms, and universities are threatened with private legal action or regulatory scrutiny unless they make millions of dollars in payouts. A recent analysis by the New Yorker has found that the Trump family has personally profited to the tune of $3.4 billion from the various crypto ventures, real estate deals, and licensing agreements, a number which will only balloon further with over three more years of corrupt self-dealing ahead.

The Democratic Party is—belatedly—realizing they must promise something more than simply undoing the damage of Trump. Many Democrats are now embracing so-called “abundance politics” which identifies the problem as a lack of “building things,” from housing to transit to clean-energy infrastructure. There is a valid critique that the Democratic Party has been too focused, when it gains power, simply on appropriating money through large federal bills, and not ensuring the money is actually spent. However, the abundance movement is spearheaded by some of the biggest enemies of the working class in the Democratic Party. Many are attacking key party constituencies (including labor) as impediments to “getting things done,” using it to push for further pro-corporate deregulation. If this is the vision of the economy in 2029 and beyond, the working class will continue to have the deck heavily stacked against us for decades to come.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) remains the most popular political figure in the country. Together with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), his Fighting Oligarchy tour has been providing needed backbone while the institutional Democratic Party signals near total capitulation. But perhaps most notable in recent months was the out-of-nowhere primary win of Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City. Mamdani is running on a platform of rent control, universal pre-K, a $30 per hour local minimum wage, eliminating bus fares, publicly-owned grocery stories, and new taxes on millionaires. This platform appears set to drive him to victory in America’s largest city, finding broad popularity among the city’s diverse working class, including many who voted for Trump in 2024.

Despite the pieces of a potential new American economic agenda already being in front of us, they are unlikely to pass without a militant mass movement. The Raise the Wage Act of 2025 (H.R.2643/S.1332) would increase the minimum wage nationwide to $17 per hour by 2030, indexing future increases to median national wage growth. The Medicare for All Act (H.R.2069/S.1506), has been reintroduced in Congress as well, as has the College for All Act (S.1832), which would make public colleges and universities tuition free for approximately 95 percent of American students. Congress should also resurrect the Green New Deal, creating millions of good, union jobs while addressing the threat of climate change. The boldness of these policies has inspired even more ambitious proposals to direct our society’s wealth into other projects that are socially useful and create good jobs, including infrastructure, public and cooperatively-owned housing, and a social wealth fund.

As record numbers of Americans approach retirement, more than 56 million lack any retirement plan through their employer, with almost half of workers over age 55 having zero retirement savings. The situation is only worsening, with pensions under attack, the Republican Party once again floating reduction of Social Security, and even perversion of already underfunded 401(k) plans by allowing employers to push their workers to invest retirement money in crypto Ponzi schemes. Working-class allies like Senator Sanders are proposing partial solutions, like the Social Security Expansion Act (S.770), which would expand Social Security benefits and fully fund the program for the next 75 years. We should go further, expanding Social Security into a true “single-payer” source of retirement income, similar to pensions in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, but these bills would provide strong movement in the direction of universal retirement security.

Our union has long supported shortening the workday and workweek. We should resist any attempt by employers to weaken one of the labor movement’s most fundamental victories—the eight-hour day and forty-hour workweek—and instead push our employers and government to shorten the workday with no cut in pay.

Workers and farmers have a strong mutual interest in an America where economic growth and social justice have higher priority than rewarding corporations, their officers, and their investors. The outlook for farming appears sharply negative, between falling exports due to Trump’s nonsensical trade policy and looming labor shortages due to ICE’s draconian war on migrant workers. All of these strains, plus those of increasing floods and droughts, fall even harder on family farms. Solidarity among trade unionists, family farmers, and farmworkers is crucial to forging an agricultural policy based on justice and prosperity.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79^th UE CONVENTION:

1. Demands Congress:
   1. Enact a federal climate jobs program to provide good, union jobs while addressing climate change;
   2. Provide adequate financial support to states and municipalities to meet the needs of their people, hire adequate staff, and provide their workers with decent wages and benefits;
   3. Pass the Raise the Wage Act of 2025;
   4. Pass the Medicare for All Act;
   5. Enact paid family and medical leave, including parental leave, as a nationwide policy, without requiring use of other paid time off benefits;
   6. Enact legislation to establish free public higher education and forgive student debt;
   7. Address the housing crisis by declaring a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions and investing in public and cooperative affordable housing;
   8. Enact comprehensive financial regulations including eliminating offshore tax havens, taxing economic speculation, breaking up or nationalizing banks that are “too big to fail,” and reducing corporate influence in politics;
   9. Reform the tax system by restoring higher tax rates for the wealthy and corporations;
   10. Remove the cap on Social Security taxes so that all contribute the same percentage of earnings to the trust fund, and to tax unearned income (capital gains and investment income) on the same basis as wages and salaries;
   11. Address the country’s retirement security crisis by expanding Social Security to pay retired workers 75 to 90 percent of their pre-retirement income, and in the meantime pass the Social Security Expansion Act;
   12. Return the retirement age for Social Security with full benefits to age 65 and reject all efforts to privatize Social Security, reduce benefits, undermine cost of living adjustments (COLA) or raise the retirement age;
   13. Restore funding for trade assistance programs such as Trade Readjustment Allowances (TRA) and Trade Adjustment Act (TAA);
   14. Enact legislation to establish a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay;
2. Calls on regions and locals to:
   1. Apply political pressure on elected officials to enact the policies in this resolution;
   2. Educate our members and communities about income and wealth inequality and policies that can address it;
   3. Work with and join organizations promoting a just economy;
   4. Articulate bargaining goals within a broader economic framework that calls for greater equality;
3. Reaffirms our longstanding policy of overtime pay for any hours after eight and our goal of reducing the work week;
4. Calls upon the labor movement to pursue a shorter work week with no loss in pay;
5. Calls on Congress and state legislatures to improve existing overtime laws and regulations, provide for their vigorous enforcement, and oppose employer-imposed “comp time” and “flex time” schemes;
6. Supports an agricultural policy that will allow farmworkers and farm families a fair return for their efforts and a decent standard of living.