What would our values look like in practice if our whole society was built around them?

That’s the question that the New Social Contract Tour aims to answer by connecting bold community and social-movement solutions that can help to redefine the promise of a more equitable and liberated future for all.

Communities and grassroots movements have long proved to have solutions to even our deepest challenges. It is out of these solutions that we must build our future. Specifically, the event will focus on structural interventions to:

• Move our economy to align with the values of a Green New Deal that ensures a just transition for all communities and a federal jobs guarantee for everyone.
• Create public financing systems that ensure workers’ basic human rights – such as health care through a Medicare For All system; and,
• Advance the Freedom To Thrive initiative: Reimagining safety and security in our communities.

Can you imagine a country where vibrant communities stretch from the coast to coast? Where all towns and cities are places where everyone can thrive?

Help to envision this future we want and that we need — one that puts people and the planet first.

Rights & Democracy Institute hosted the launch of the New Social Contract for Workers on September 15th in Manchester, NH.

Further Reading

New Social Contract (link to overview)

We need to envision a new social contract that puts people and our planet first, one that emerges from community, worker and social-movement driven solutions promising a more equitable and liberated future for all.

We can, and must, fight for and build this future together.

New Social Contract for Workers (link to report)

To begin to build a new social contract for workers, our movements are calling for the following bold new public policies:

• The Right to Collective Action at Scale: Sectoral Bargaining — By reinventing our labor law system so that workers are not forced to bargain company-by-company, but instead can negotiate fair work conditions across a whole sector and up supply chains, we can restore workers’ bargaining power at scale;
• Freedom from Arbitrary Job Loss: “Just Cause” Employment”— We can protect workers from being abruptly left with bills due and no paycheck by adopting “just cause” employment protections that require employers to give a good reason, fair notice and severance pay before a worker can be left without a job;
• The Human Right to a Decent Job: A Federal Job Guarantee —With a federal job guarantee we can end structural unemployment and ensure that every person in America has access to a decent job;
• Democracy at Work: The Cooperative Advantage —We can democratize our economy and ensure workers receive a fair share of economic gains by promoting the growth of worker cooperatives that enable workers to be owners of their workplaces; and
• Universal Guarantees to Basic Needs: Medicare for All and Universal Family Care —We can free workers from inadequate employer-based benefits by creating new universal social support systems, beginning with health insurance through Medicare for All and Universal Family Care to meet their caregiving needs.

In addition to calling for these five transformational policies, workers are urging action on a broader agenda of other badly needed labor reforms. As detailed below, such reforms can pave the way for more fundamental change by responding to abusive policies and removing obstacles workers face today in their push for justice.