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Restructuring Employment

Mission:

The corporate market system is based on a competitive struggle to exploit people and nature for profits and growth. We reject this system because it creates a dynamic of endless growth that is incompatible with ecological sustainability and fosters greed and domination in society.

Short Term

1. Oppose trade agreements (North American Free Trade Agreement - NAFTA - and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - GATT, WTO) which would jeopardize U.S. environmental, public health and safety, worker safety, and/or fair labor standards.
2. Establish a minimum "living wage" (perhaps starting at $10.00/hr = $20,000/yr for 40 hrs/wk) and adequate safety net for workers.
3. Develop expand, and implement safe working conditions, whistle blower protection and a worker's right to know.
4. Support medical, maternity and paternity leave for workers.
5. Ban policies aimed at weakening the bargaining power of unions, i.e. replacing full-time employees with temporary and part-time employees in order to reduce union membership reducing employee benefits, closing plants and exporting jobs, etc
6. Support on-site daycare for the children of workers and students
7. Endorse and support agriculturally based organizations to enable farm workers to organize to negotiate fair wages and humane working conditions.
8. Elimination of mandatory drug testing for non-safety jobs.
9. Creation and strict enforcement of policies that protect the health of farm workers at all stages of crop production and harvesting as well as their right to fair wages and safe working conditions.

Medium Term

1. Establish a workers superfund that would provide income and retraining to workers displaced by corporate flight, military conversion, and technological change. This program should be funded by a variable taxation on production; a value-added tax according to the social and ecological priorities society chooses.
2. Where practical, promote housing near workplaces and focus work within the community so people feel connected and have a sense of purpose.
3. Allow employees time off during election days.
4. Promote policies that limit the amount of agricultural land that can be owned or controlled by any one person, corporation, government entity, or organization ideally resulting in more family farms and people living on the land
5. Work towards decreasing the number of hours in a standard workweek in order to encourage the creation of stable, permanent jobs.

Long Term

1. Encourage employee-controlled work cooperatives instead of big corporations with highly paid, hierarchically organized managers, supervisors and CEO's.
2. Within these cooperatives, have employee associations agree on wages, working conditions, benefits, etc.
3. Public job banks should be established so that people who cannot find work in the private sector can take a publicly funded job that fulfills community-defined needs.

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