Report: President Urged to Use Executive Authority to Create 'Good Jobs' With Living Wages, Revitalize Middle Class

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- With Labor Day in the offing, President Obama's own executive power is a key to creating jobs at higher wages, according to a new special report by The American Prospect, the nation's premier magazine of progressive politics and policy. A press teleconference will be held to preview the findings and proposals of this report on August 23, 2010. This report is published in collaboration with Demos, a national research and policy center.

For 30 years, America has been moving away from a middle-class society anchored in good jobs. The current financial crisis has only worsened this trend. There are numerous challenges to pushing a "good jobs" agenda, including a weakened labor movement, the lack of an industrial or trade policy that addresses employment, the absence of a serious labor market policy, and government's failure, even in a deep recession, to focus on creating living wage jobs. The new Demos/American Prospect Special Report offers several crucial reforms that the federal government can undertake to reverse this trend. The issue is edited by Robert Kuttner, a Prospect Co-founding Editor, a Senior Fellow at Demos, and longtime reporter on labor and economic policy.

Press Teleconference Details

Presenters:

• Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect Magazine, Demos Senior Fellow and economic policy journalist, will summarize the report and highlight key issues for near-term executive action;
• Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute, will discuss the economic landscape in the US and how "good jobs" have disappeared over the last three decades;
• Ann O'Leary, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic & Family Security at U.C. Berkeley School of Law and Senior Fellow at American Progress, is an author of one of the report's articles on the government grant, loan and loan-guarantee programs, will discuss the existing authority held by the federal government allowing it to make these reforms;
• Tom Woodruff, Director of Change to Win's Strategic Organizing Center, will discuss the connection between collective bargaining and higher wages, and why the future of organized labor is vital to the Prosperity of the Middle Class

Call-in Number: (888) 491 - 8283    Conference ID: 95069530

RSVPs for the call and to obtain a preview PDF of the Good Jobs issue: Tim Rusch, Demos, [email protected]

Topics and Authors featured in the "Not Just More Jobs—But Good Jobs" Special Report

• Harold Meyerson on the misclassification of regular workers as temporary or contract employees, and the potential impact of a high-profile and systematic enforcement effort targeted at the large companies that employee them.
• David Moberg on Pentagon contractors that are notorious low-wage employers, and why there is a national security case for government to set and enforce labor standards in defense contracting. This piece looks specifically at the principal contractors producing MREs and military uniforms.
• David Bensman, Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relationships at Rutgers University, on federal reclassification of transportation workers and reforming US ports by modernizing safety systems and requiring trucker certification. *He will be on the press call to answer questions.
• Steve Franklin on how the Department of Agriculture, which spends upwards of $800 million on produce for the school lunch program, can extend bargaining rights to farm workers and sponsor a bill of rights that includes access to sanitary facilities, clean water, and decent housing.
• Jan Breidenbach on making sure that government-sponsored green housing jobs, which includes the installation of solar panels and retrofitting homes, are high-wage jobs.
• And others on paying childcare workers a decent wage, insisting on high- quality manufacturing jobs, and the broad social and economic benefits of a high-wage workforce.

This special report was made possible through the generous support of Change to Win.

SOURCE Demos