Media

Once upon a time, the term “government job” was not synonymous with boondoggles, corruption or the perennial “waste, fraud and abuse.” During the New Deal, the state proudly created jobs and spent public money as a vital intervention to check the excesses of market capitalism. Today, the public is disgusted with both fiscal policy and the free market.

A public policy group instrumental in a successful campaign to win a higher minimum wage for federal contract workers is now aiming at a larger target — federal contracting companies.

Demos, in a report released Wednesday, said Uncle Sam could better use his $1.3 trillion in purchasing power by pushing government contractors to improve conditions for their employees.

Does the inequality of a state affect the inequality of representation?

“We should do everything we can to strengthen unions in this country,” said President Obama on Tuesday.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, this amendment is a necessary counterbalance to the deluge of money that wealthy individuals, corporations and special interests have flooded into our elections.

(New York, NY) – Eight million workers rely on low-wage jobs supported by the federal government’s $1.3 trillion in annual spending on goods and services, a new report by the national public policy organization Demos finds.

With a Congress that will not act to support American workers and their families, it is more important than ever that [the president] take executive action to institute a Good Jobs Policy. 

Paid family leave, which tops the agenda of next Monday's White House Summit on Working Families, and which was discussed at Tuesday's CNN town hall with Hillary Clinton, is a good idea whose time has come -- and gone. And come. And gone.

Asked whether paid maternity leave should be mandated by law, Clinton said "eventually, it should be, but, right now, we're seeing some -- some very good proposals being implemented in other parts of the country, so that we have answers."

For young adults who entered the workforce between the start of the Great Recession in 2009 to the present, days spent searching for jobs — any jobs at all — have stretched into weeks, months and even years. This endless disappointment seems to be the new normal for a generation of young people who were once assured that if they graduated from high school, attended college and studied hard, they would enjoy gainful employment in the field of their choosing.