This is an article about security, and empowerment, and how Millennials feel disengaged from the political process, but not from politics. In the end, this is an article about unions, and how maybe, just maybe, they could be Millennials’ silver bullet.

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In 11th grade I began each day at 7:15, fingering my way towards the off button on my alarm clock. I never hit snooze in my three years at that school, not once. For me, in boarding school, there was no time to snooze. I was out of my league in every way, from the clothes I wore, to the way I spoke, to the way I thought. My class at Andover was the 234th entering class, the 34th that admitted women, and the first to receive need-blind admission.

My second period class was U.S. history with Mr. Jones, a notoriously hard teacher who sometimes played a game called “attendance” with us. He’d ask us for our favorite band, television show, or movie of the moment. If he didn’t like an answer, he threatened to mark us as absent for the day. The school only granted you five “free” absences per the term—any more and you were assigned extra work duty.

Near the middle of the term, as we inched closer and closer to the precise center of our textbook, we began learning about the labor movement. Our textbook, despite its colored pages, featured only black and white images of factories filled with older white men—perhaps a necessary product of the time, perhaps not.

I’m not sure if any kids in the class had family members who worked in unions. No one said they did. No one said they didn’t.

After midterms, I mostly forgot about unions. I graduated from high school and then college, and landed a job at a think tank. My first day was June 1. By the end of the month, I had signed a union card.

***

“There’s this perception that young people don’t really care about their work, like insurance and benefits. Because they’re young,” Eunice How tells me.

Eunice is 26, Chinese Malaysian American, and an organizer with the UNITE HERE union in Seattle. Her parents, who are ethnically Chinese, immigrated to the United States when they were denied access to higher education in Malaysia. They moved to Illinois, where Eunice was born, then to Singapore, then back to Illinois, and then Eunice moved to Washington state for college, where she’s lived ever since.

Do we care about insurance and benefits? I wonder. Do I care about insurance and benefits?

I pause and think back to when I was offered my job. I was lying in my bed fiddling about, in the last few weeks before college graduation, when a representative from HR called to offer me the job.

“Really?” I asked.

“…really,” she said, skeptical of my skepticism.

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered back. “I’m just. I’m surprised,” I said.

When did employment become a surprise? When did the story change from sending out one résumé to sending out 100?

Millennials, generally defined as those aged 18 to 35, are a generation defined by insecurity. Our lives were rocked by national insecurity, with 9/11 and terrorism and the Iraq War, and then financial instability, when we watched parents and relatives and loved ones across the country lose their jobs in the wake of the greatest economic recession in recent memory. A recession that was so sudden, so unforeseen, that it reverberated across families, towns, and local economies like an earthquake, leaving behind a tremoring 10% unemployment rate.

Today, Millennials are still reckoning with the aftermath. And, if history is any indication, we always will be. Recessions tend to follow generations: if you enter the economy during a recession, when demand for jobs is high but the supply is low (and so are wages), your earnings will stay low even when the recession fades. It’s no wonder that, according to recent polling, Millennials are the only generation that prioritize economic stability over economic prosperity.

Financial insecurity is like trying to build an Ikea bookshelf after you mess up the first step: the bookshelf will never balance quite right. Financial insecurity affects the job you decide to take, where you live,  whether you buy a house, how many kids you have, if you have kids, how much money you put toward your health care, whether you can travel to see the world, and your views, beliefs, and relationships.

Unions improve conditions for workers in many ways, from higher wages to stronger benefits, but, taken together, they can be summed up in one word.

What do unions offer young workers? I ask Eunice. “Security,” she tells me.

***

If you’re a Millennial, you’re likely making less money than your parents did at the same age. Wages for a 30-year-old today are lower than they were for a 30-year-old in 2004, and more Millennials live in poverty today than older generations did at the same age. In addition to earning less, each successive graduating class over the past few years has received the dubious honor of the most indebted graduating class in history; the average student debt burden per borrower now surpasses $35,000.

We’re also the most educated generation in history. And we’re part of a workforce that has become more and more productive, even though we haven’t seen that trend reflected in our wages.

That is the first reason that it’s confusing that more Millennials aren’t in unions: unions are proven to raise individual wages. According to a 2011 analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics union workers averaged $23.02 an hour, compared to $19.51 for nonunion workers. These gains are collective: increases in union density raise wages for nonunion members. More broadly, when low- and middle-class Americans have more money in their pockets the entire economy benefits from increased spending.

Americans seem to recognize this: in 2016, a (slim) majority of Americans said labor unions mostly help the U.S. economy. What’s more, in another Gallup poll, Millennials appear to be the generation most supportive of unions. In 2015, Gallup found that 66% of 18- to 34-year-olds approved of labor unions, versus 53% of 35- to 54-year-olds.

And yet, while Millennials appear to be the most supportive generation of unions, they’re also among the least likely to actually be in one. In 1984, 17% of 30-year-old private sector workers were covered by a union. In 2004 that number dropped to 7.6%, and in 2014 it was down to just 5.9%.

Why do Millennials value unions, but not experience their value?

While an uptick in anti-union activity explains part of the mismatch between the number of Millennials covered by unions and the number who could be, there’s another a problem. There’s a pervasive idea that unions are only for certain kinds of people: low-income, industrial, white, older, male workers. For Millennials, the most diverse generation in history, this image isn’t simply outdated—it’s prohibitive.

***

“I never really learned about the labor movement until I was in college,” Eunice says. Her mom was in a teacher’s union, but since her school was a closed shop she didn’t really have a choice in the matter. “I guess I recall thinking unions are for working class people.”

“That’s changed!” she exclaims. “There’s all sorts of people who are in unions: office staff, nonprofit workers, health care workers. It’s not just like the white man who’s a plumber! That’s the media view.”

That’s also—whether by consequence or coincidence—the view of a lot of Millennials.

Shawn Fields is 27, black, and a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She’s also a member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 6300. She grew up in Detroit, home of the American auto industry, and the auto workers’ unions. Union blood runs through her veins: her great-grandfather worked in the factories, and her grandmother, as a preschool teacher, was also a member of the AFT.

But Shawn never saw herself joining a union. “I didn’t think about it,” she says. “In Detroit, a lot of the unions are very much industrial, and I didn’t see myself getting an industrial job so it never necessarily occurred to me that that was an option.”

The three things that came to mind when Shawn described how she thought of unions growing up? Detroit, auto workers, older men.

When she landed at the University of Illinois for grad school, a mentor reached out and told her about the union. Though graduate students at private universities only just won the right to unionize this summer through a National Labor Rights Board (NLRB) decision, as a public university, graduate students at UIUC have been unionized since 2002.

Shawn joined and is now an active member of her bargaining unit, and has also served on the AFT’s racial justice task force.

What do you think of unions today? I ask. Who do they represent?

“It’s definitely more diverse than what I imagined when I was younger. It’s definitely young people, a lot more women and people of color than [what I thought] when I was younger,” she says.

***

Millennials are the most diverse generation in the history of the United States. When the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the country, passed a resolution in 2013 recognizing the importance of youth engagement for the future of the labor movement, it simultaneously passed a resolution on diversity. “A diverse and inclusive labor movement is essential to connecting with and representing the workforce of the future,” the resolution read.

The demographics skew in unions’ favor. Millennials are more likely to be people of color than previous generations, and some racial minorities—notably black Americans—tend to be over-represented in unions and to hold more positive views of them. According to the AFL-CIO, African Americans constitute 11.7% of the workforce but 14% of union members. At the same time, 69% of black Americans view unions positively, versus 51% of the general population.

And yet despite the promise of these statistics, Rachel Bryan, a staff member at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—who is black and formerly incarcerated—sees a disconnect between unions’ potential and their reality.

“We’re not organizing in an effective way. We’re not organizing where [young people] are. We’re not linking ourselves back into the community in ways that young people are there…There’s a new American majority, but we’re going to focus on white guys?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she says.

***

For the organizers I talked to, unions were about security. But for the young union members I talked to, their union experiences were defined more by a sense of empowerment. For the generation that founded Occupy Wall Street and then Black Lives Matter, the association of unions with empowerment is important.

“I didn’t feel comfortable at my old job to ask for more things, because I felt lucky to have a job,” says Jane Tandler, a 26-year-old Ph.D student at Duke University and a leader of the movement to organize the school’s graduate students. She pauses, twisting an idea around her mind.

“I’m trying to think if this is an issue of empowerment,” she finally muses aloud.

Jane first joined Duke’s graduate student unionization efforts because she wanted to improve her school’s policies concerning sexual harassment. Originally, she says, it hadn’t occurred to her that a union could help address her concerns and work to improve the policy. Now when I ask her to name how unions impact Millennials, she rattles off a list of issues prominent to our generation: Black Lives Matter, sexual assault and harassment, environmental justice. For Jane, whether she realizes it or not, unions represent a distinct kind of empowerment: the ability to organize around specific issues.

Without prompting, Shawn, the grad student at UIUC, volunteered the idea of empowerment when I asked her why she decided to join a union in the first place. “You can kind of feel very disconnected from everything” as a graduate student, Shawn says. But when a mentor introduced her to the union, she says, she had a realization: “Oh this is something I want to do that makes me feel more empowered.”

***

Economists talk a lot about matching: when the workforce’s skills match the demand of the local labor market, unemployment is low. In a similar sense, unions match Millennials’ needs. They’re a platform to agitate for higher wages and better benefits, which Millennials need to counteract the lasting effects of the Great Recession. They also provide a bridge to advocate for the issues Millennials care so deeply about.

Sometimes it feels inevitable to me: there must be a swell of Millennial support for the labor movement coming. The pieces fit too perfectly. They match. But the image problem—the idea that unions only represent older white male workers—can feel intractable. It’s not just prohibiting Millennials from securing better wages or stronger benefits—it may also be blocking Millennials from using unions as an outlet for their politics.

Millennials don’t turn out to the polls in overwhelming numbers (in fact, the numbers underwhelm). We may be withdrawing from traditional measures of political engagement, but we’re not withdrawing from politics. We demand accountability for biased policing, we rally to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and we organize against the campus sexual assault epidemic.

Unions—which, almost by definition, uplift the 99% and rely on collective action—could be the platform that finally captures Millennials’ particular breed of political engagement. Are unions—and Millennials—ready to turn the page?

The United States already has an effective program that protects workers from falling into poverty or losing their homes when they are laid-off, by temporarily replacing some of their earnings while they look for a new job. Unemployment Insurance (UI) isn’t exactly a household name, but the program’s benefits have provided stability and protection to working families for eight decades.

Unfortunately, the program isn’t reaching everyone who needs it—in 2014, just 1 in 4 jobless workers received UI benefits. In large part, that’s because policymakers have failed to update UI to keep pace with dramatic changes in the American workforce and overall economy. But in some states, lawmakers have done even more damage by cutting program benefits and tightening already-strict eligibility rules. This leaves workers—particularly low-wage workers, women, and people of color—without a safeguard if they lose their jobs.

Cutting UI also jeopardizes our entire economy, because it is our first line of defense against recession: it creates demand by boosting the spending power of struggling families, which helps to stabilize the economy during downturns. We’re currently enjoying our seventh year of economic expansion, but we’ve never had an expansion last longer than ten years—so lawmakers should be preparing for the next recession before it arrives.

Here are seven steps that would put the UI program on firm footing before the next economic downturn:

1. Give people enough time to find new jobs

Finding a new job takes time—in 2015, it took an average of 29 weeks. For that reason, UI was designed to replace about half of a typical worker’s wages for up to 26 weeks while she searches for work. But states have been slashing benefits so that they replace far less than half a worker’s wages, and nine states now offer fewer than 26 weeks of support (with Florida and North Carolina cutting off benefits after just half that time).

Since UI is an earned benefit—workers contribute to the program through payroll taxes, just like Social Security—these states are shortchanging workers on a protection they’ve earned. It’s time for Congress to set standards guaranteeing all qualifying workers 26 weeks of protection, and replacing at least half of wages for low- and middle-income workers.

2. Keep workers in the jobs they already have

UI includes a provision that can actually prevent layoffs from happening in the first place. Work sharing  gives employers the option to temporarily reduce their employees’ work hours—rather than laying them off—while UI steps in to replace part of workers’ lost wages.

It’s a win-win—workers keep their jobs and businesses retain experienced employees—but 21 states still haven’t established work sharing programs. Policymakers should ensure work programs exist in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, so that employers and workers have an alternative to layoffs during the next recession.

3. Train unemployed workers for new careers

Many workers whose jobs fall prey to globalization and technological change will need to retrain for work in a different sector. Our nation’s workforce development system—and UI’s reemployment services, in particular—is highly effective, but it is woefully underfunded. As a result, the system doesn’t reach nearly enough workers. Worker retraining actually has bipartisanship support—the only hold-up is Congress’s failure to put more money where its mouth is.

4. Include low-paid workers

It’s bad enough that workers today can legally be paid a poverty wage. But leaving low-wage workers without assistance during unemployment because they were underpaid—even when they have typically contributed the same amount in unemployment tax as higher earners—is downright absurd. Yet because most states use an earnings threshold to determine who is eligible for UI, low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to get UI as higher earners (despite being twice as likely to be laid off).

To avoid punishing low-wage workers, UI eligibility should be based on the number of hours worked—not the amount of money earned. Once someone has worked 300 hours at the state’s minimum wage over the course of two calendar quarters, they should automatically qualify.

5. Protect more women in the workplace

Women are now primary breadwinners in 40% of American households, but UI hasn’t adapted to keep pace with this reality. Women are twice as likely as men to be part-time workers, but since part-time workers are excluded from UI in one-third of states, many women are being unfairly disadvantaged. Women are also more likely to have to leave the workforce to care for an ill relative or for personal reasons such as escaping domestic violence, and some states don’t allow them to receive UI when they search for new work.

All states should extend UI coverage to part-time workers, as well as workers who must quit for so-called “good causes.”

6. Make sure all workers pay their fair share

UI is funded through two modest payroll taxes. Nearly every worker—whether they are making millions of dollars or minimum wage—contributes the same $42 per year in federal UI tax. This is because workers only pay federal taxes on the first $7,000 of their wages every year. This hasn’t been adjusted in 33 years, and each year the tax gets more regressive. Congress should fix this by broadening the taxable wage base—for example, by applying UI taxes to earnings up to $59,000 (about half of the Social Security wage base). This would allow us to lower tax rates while still collecting the same amount of revenue.

7. Build the emergency exits before the next fire.

Jobs are scarce during recessions, so laid-off workers need longer on average to find new work. For that reason, UI has a program called Extended Benefits (EB), which is supposed to automatically activate when a recession approaches. It’s a great idea, but the triggers that turn on the EB program don’t respond quickly enough when unemployment rises, so the assistance EB provides is often too little and too late. To trigger EB now, more than 5% of the workforce would need to be receiving UI benefits—but since so few workers are eligible for UI, that’s a tall order.

Policymakers should fix these triggers so that the UI system is not caught unprepared when the next downturn arrives.

In the longer term, policymakers should give unemployment protections a big-picture update to match the modern economy.

Even if UI were fully updated, a substantial share of unemployed jobseekers today would remain ineligible for UI. This includes new college graduates and caregivers returning to work, as well as gig economy workers such as Uber drivers and TaskRabbit workers. To assist these workers, we should create a Jobseeker’s Allowance—a modest short-term stipend to support job hunting and training. Many countries—such as the United Kingdom and Germany—already have similar programs that help workers connect to job opportunities and improve their work-related skills.

Economic expansions don’t last forever—and experts are increasingly calling on Congress to prepare the nation for the next recession. By taking concrete steps today to fix the cracks in our nation’s unemployment protections, policymakers can protect more working families against the hardship of job loss.

I decided I wanted to do more than just survive, so I did the things that people do when they embrace their lives. I took a spontaneous girls’ trip. I went to a Jill Scott concert. I bought myself a fancy pair of shoes, and I cut my hair short.

For a while, I felt like everything would be OK. Then, a few weeks after my 35^th birthday, I lost my job.

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The morning that I was laid off, I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked into my boss’s office. There was a woman in the room I’d never met before, from Human Resources. She said all the things she is trained to say to soften the blow—“it’s not you, it’s the budget,” and “there are ways to deal with a ‘Reduction in Force’”—but there was no amount of wordsmithing that could change the facts.

I was unemployed.

That night, I sat down with my husband to figure out how we were going to make ends meet. We made a lot of deep cuts in our budget, including taking our seven-year-old daughter out of the aftercare program she loved. We tried to explain it to her the best we could and she seemed to take it in stride—but her sleep terrors told a different story. One night, in her sleep, she asked: “Mommy, what happens if we run out of money?”  My heart was broken, but I couldn’t tell her how worried I really was.

The truth is, her aftercare wasn’t the only major loss. I also lost my health insurance, which is crucial for managing my symptoms. The medications and appointments are expensive, and without them I could form new lesions on my brain that make the condition worse. Plus, stress alone can exacerbate MS. Treatment for that requires IV steroids—another expense, which leads to more stress, which leads to more symptoms.

The problem is, it’s hard to stay calm when your identity is being called into question. I had been working in public health for a decade, and I’ve kept a steady job of some kind since I was 13 or 14 years old. I was raised to be a “worker bee”—I’ve been staff at daycares, offices, restaurants, and my church’s youth program—and I didn’t know what to do without a job.

I searched for a new position with fervor: I checked with community colleges, health departments, department of human services, and universities. It was important to me to find a job that I loved, and that matched my experience, but they were few and far between—and my family needed an income.

To help us get by, I applied for unemployment benefits. I completed most of the process online, and I was able to call and speak to someone when I had questions. Soon, I was approved and began receiving a weekly stipend.

The benefits certainly didn’t replace my job—they only make up for about one-third of my income—but they’ve given us a little time. We have been able to keep our two-year-old in daycare so that I can go to job interviews, and we can pay the power bill, buy groceries, and put gas in the car. But my benefits are about to run out, and our household expenses are not.

Compared to a lot of Mississippians, I’m truly blessed. Last year, less than 15% of unemployed people in the state received these benefits—the other 85% were left to piece together a living however they could. Still, politicians are talking about cutting the program even further.

I can’t help but wonder if they have ever had to walk a mile in these shoes. Have they had to make the decision to take their children out of school? Or choose between paying the mortgage and buying groceries? If they had, maybe they’d choose differently.

Lundberg is one of more than 250 women who have successfully completed the Women in Construction (WinC) pre-apprenticeship program in Biloxi, Mississippi.  This eight-week program prepares low-income women for apprenticeships or other construction jobs—it covers everything from basic safety, construction math, and handling power tools, to workers’ rights and the history of the trades.

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Like Lundberg, many of the women in WinC face significant barriers to employment, including histories of domestic violence, homelessness, lack of access to affordable, quality child care, or inadequate health care (Mississippi has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act).  That’s why WinC provides case management services and child care through Early Head Start, in addition to traditional job training.

“The job training is sort of a jumping off point for so many people,” says Julie Kuklinski, the program’s director. “And our comprehensive services also help participants get where they want to go.”

For some graduates, WinC may launch them into an apprenticeship, which allows them to earn a wage while learning skills on the job and through classroom instruction. Research shows that apprenticeship raises worker productivity and leads to competitive wages—the average starting wage for someone who has completed an apprenticeship program is $50,000.

Pre-apprenticeship programs like WinC not only help marginalized workers gain economic security, they also help employers establish a pipeline for diverse, skilled workers.  But there are very few programs like it across the country. As a result, apprenticeship programs are often inaccessible to the people who would most benefit from them.

For example, the construction industry offers many high-wage apprenticeships, but in 2013 just 2.1% of these apprentices were women. At the same time, women and people of color were overrepresented in the lowest-wage apprenticeship programs, where average earnings are less than $15 per hour.

Moreover, recent analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) shows that apprenticeship programs are often less diverse than the occupations they ultimately serve.  This suggests that while people of color are employed in these occupations, they are less likely to receive training and obtain a credential—and therefore earn the same pay as those who complete an apprenticeship—for their work. It is not totally clear why women and people of color are underrepresented in apprenticeship programs, but discrimination in the hiring process and on the job likely play a role.

Historically, federal efforts to make apprenticeship programs more racially and gender diverse have had limited success. But that is beginning to change.

President Barack Obama recently set a national goal to double the number of apprenticeship programs over five years, and to increase opportunities for women and people of color to participate in them. To support this effort, the Administration and Congress have authorized $265 million in competitive grants for apprenticeships.

The DOL has also made achieving racial and gender diversity a priority of this grant-making process. And, for the first time since 1978, the agency has taken steps to modernize the Equal Opportunity Employment regulation that prohibits discrimination and requires affirmative action in apprenticeship programs. Given the very limited progress we have made on diversifying apprenticeships in the intervening decades, this is a critical regulatory fix.

But more must be done.

Congress should ensure that there is dedicated funding to help states and localities develop new and diverse pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs. Congress should also ensure that this funding is tied to achieving goals of increased participation by women and people of color, particularly in high-wage fields.

With thoughtful and targeted policy changes like these, we can ensure that all workers—regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or disability status—have a fair shot at a good job through an apprenticeship.

But in 21 states, low-wage workers are still stuck at $7.25 per hour. That means 57 million workers—nearly 40 percent of our workforce—work in a state where the minimum wage is well beneath the federal poverty level for a family of two. What’s worse, at least 14 states have gone so far as to pass preemptive legislation that prohibits local areas from enacting their own minimum wage policies.

Low-paid workers in these states aren’t simply being denied a long-overdue raise—they’re actually losing purchasing power. Because the minimum wage has not been indexed to keep pace with inflation, minimum wage workers are falling further behind every day that Congress fails to act.

In fact, a minimum wage earner in a $7.25 state who is working full-time, year-round would have to clock an additional 244 hours each year just to take home the same annual pay she did in a single year in 2009, after adjusting for inflation. Put another way, she’d need an extra 31 working days—more than six weeks—just to maintain her earnings from seven years ago.

For all our ingenuity, we haven’t yet figured out how to cram more days into a year. So, until we master the magic of time dilation, every year that Congress fails to raise the minimum wage will effectively mean another pay cut for workers in these states—and with it, a greater struggle to make ends meet.

The American people have made it abundantly clear where they stand on minimum wages. By wide majorities, voters on both sides of the political aisle—including small business owners, who occupy a special place in the rhetoric of many politicians—support raising the wage above $7.25. The research agrees: In the past, minimum-wage policy has proven an effective tool for increasing earnings and reducing poverty among working families—as well as increasing productivity and reducing turnover in the workplace—without leading to job loss.

Only one group seems to have missed the memo on America’s eagerness for higher wages: conservative lawmakers. In 2014, they rejected the Miller-Harkin bill, which would have raised the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, with the congressional vote split almost perfectly along party lines. And so far no conservatives are among the 32 senators and 160 representatives co-sponsoring the federal $12 by 2020 bill that was introduced last year.

On this seventh anniversary of federal wage stagnation, policymakers should resolve not to let another July 25—another 7/25—go by with any workers in our nation still subsisting on $7.25. Federal lawmakers have an increasingly urgent responsibility to reach out to the millions of workers whose state legislatures refuse stand up for—or worse, actively stand in the way of—their right to be paid a decent wage for a hard day’s work. If we do not, struggling workers—surrounded by the rising costs of making ends meet in America—will be left further and further behind.

As our boss walked away, panic shot through my body. It was 2009. The recession had now smacked us right in the face.

When Dylan and I tried to get the two months of back pay that we were owed, the North Carolina Department of Labor flatly told us there was no recourse, and suggested we apply for unemployment benefits (UI). The process was daunting.  It required a lengthy registration and application, a long lead time before we’d receive any benefits, and a “weekly certification” to prove we were seeking new employment. Eventually, our first unemployment checks came in. Mine totaled around $150 per week, Dylan’s around $85 per week.

Our daily job searches and revised resumes were fruitless. We delayed paying bills, cashed in coin jars, and sold off the few luxury items we had, like film cameras and well-played, treasured records. But it wasn’t enough to keep us in our apartment.

We made the difficult decision to move into the basement of my future mother-in-law’s home in New Hampshire. Our unemployment benefits, though meager, were key to getting us a moving truck so we could have a roof to live under and hold onto the things we hadn’t sold.

Fourteen months later, I was laid off again—right after I had returned from our honeymoon. Dylan, too, had lost his job in New Hampshire shortly before we were married.  Instead of newlywed bliss, we faced stress and fatigue as we crunched numbers to make ends meet.

Luckily, the process for claiming unemployment was much easier and faster in New Hampshire. And since our recent jobs had paid us slightly higher wages, and New Hampshire policies were far more generous, our checks came in at $450 between the two of us—almost double what we received in North Carolina.

But the bills continued to pile up on the kitchen counter. There were stacks of legal pads on the nightstand. We postdated and subtracted to survive—a process made more difficult on an empty stomach, which was too often the case for us. We eventually applied for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  After we got through its long application process the program gave us a second huge sigh of relief. We could eat. Therefore we could think. Crunch some more numbers.

Six years later, my husband and I still live paycheck to paycheck. But the specter of poverty sits right on my shoulder. It’s there. Always.

Because I have faced the reality of living on a shoestring, I know how critical programs like unemployment insurance and SNAP are. Without them, the story of our small family would be radically different. We would not have gone on to start our own business, begun to build up our savings (albeit slowly), or, with trepidation, started to dream again.

But public assistance has become even harder to secure in states like North Carolina. Since we left, the state legislature has passed harmful cuts to the UI program. Now residents are eligible for just 13 weeks of UI—half the duration permitted in most other states. In our case, this harsh time limit wouldn’t have given us any chance of finding suitable jobs and applying for them, let alone completing the process of interviewing and securing a start date.  In contrast, the state of New Hampshire offers modest insurance benefits that gave us the boost we needed to get back on our feet.

I know too many people who work hard and get knocked down. It’s time for an unemployment insurance system that lifts people back up—no matter where they live.

But their experience will be different this time. Not only is it unlikely that jobs will return quickly, but draconian changes in the state’s UI program have meant that workers can no longer rely on the program to help keep them afloat until their next job. One man shared that his UI benefits represent less than one-fifth of what he used to earn—only about half of what he would have received from the social insurance program during previous periods of unemployment.

He is not alone. A young woman who was laid off from her job at a non-profit in North Carolina’s capitol Raleigh—a city recognized for its relatively strong labor market—is still struggling to find work in her field and has taken part-time jobs since her unemployment insurance ran out. Despite her graduate degree and solid work experience, opportunities to continue in her career or pursue a new one have been stymied by the immediate need to pay for rent and food.

Meanwhile, prospects for workers are only getting worse, as solidly middle-class jobs in North Carolina’s remaining manufacturing counties continue to be lost. And, given how unlikely it is that these lost positions will be replaced by good jobs, these layoffs could spur a ripple effect in the local economy, harming every community business from the suppliers who sell parts to manufacturing plants, to local grocery stores and restaurants that serve the workers these companies once employed. In the past, UI benefits could have given cash-strapped unemployed workers money to spend, stimulating consumer demand that would keep these businesses operating—but North Carolina’s policymakers have crippled the program.

It’s clear that North Carolina’s workers—and its economy—need UI more than ever. However, extreme policy choices have left the state’s UI system unprepared to address the fallout of these layoffs, let alone the next economic downturn.

As a result of years’ worth of tax cuts for businesses, North Carolina’s Unemployment Trust Fund was quickly overwhelmed when unemployment rose during the Great Recession, and the state went into debt to pay the UI benefits it owed. In 2013, rather than restoring the program to solvency, leaders in the General Assembly instead pushed through cuts to North Carolina’s UI program that reduced the number of weeks workers could collect benefits, slashed UI’s weekly benefit amount, and limited job training and workforce development opportunities.

These changes have been devastating to North Carolina’s working families. As a result, North Carolina’s UI system went from being fairly average compared to other states to downright stingy. Today, just 1 in 10 jobless workers in North Carolina receives UI—the lowest level in the nation. And, although nearly a third of jobless workers are out of work for 26 weeks or longer, the state offers just 13 weeks of UI for them to fall back on. This is coupled with steep benefit cuts: The average weekly benefit has dropped to a meager $233—just one-third of what is required to meet the basic needs of a family with one adult and one child in North Carolina.

In the name of helping businesses, North Carolina’s leaders took an extreme approach that will actually hurt its economy: When the next economic downturn arrives, UI payments will be insufficient to ensure that workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own can maintain their spending and thus generate the demand for goods and services produced by local businesses. Even more troubling is the fact that cuts to unemployment insurance—a program designed to sustain the American middle class—come at a time when North Carolina is experiencing the fourth-largest decline in the nation in the share of adults with middle incomes. Cuts to the UI program have likely exacerbated this trend: Many workers are now forced to take jobs for lower pay because they cannot afford to search for higher-quality employment. By tearing down UI—a program intended to ensure that job loss doesn’t push working families off the economic ladder—lawmakers have actually acted to expand the ranks of workers earning low wages.

It would be bad enough if North Carolina had stopped there. But unemployment insurance cuts have been made worse by state policymakers’ eagerness to pursue every punitive measure available to them across other critical programs.

For example, state leaders have implemented a time limit on access to food assistance in counties whose labor markets were deemed too weak to provide jobs to all those who want to work. In addition, they’ve refused to invest state dollars in specific skills training or career pathways that would allow jobless workers to prepare for future jobs and new careers. And they have made too little commitment to helping rural communities—and those struggling with the loss of manufacturing jobs—rebuild their economies.

Our state leaders must commit to pushing forward better policies that support jobless workers in North Carolina. However, the UI system is ultimately a state-federal partnership. So key federal reforms are important to ensure all those who are jobless and seeking work in our state have a better chance of staying connected to the labor market.

A first step for the federal reform is to set minimum standards for state systems—including North Carolina’s—that are based on what works to support the economy and connect unemployed workers to jobs. Such minimum standards must include the provision of at least 26 weeks of UI benefits for laid-off workers, and benefit amounts that are sufficient to support jobless workers while they seek a new job. Beyond that, federal investments should place a greater emphasis on re-employment services so that jobless workers can connect with local employers and access skills training they need to advance their careers.

North Carolina’s unemployment insurance cuts surpass nearly all other states’ in their harshness, and have been a disaster for jobless workers and their communities. What state policymakers are likely to discover when the next recession arrives—if not before—is that these cuts will come at enormous cost to our economy as well.

It was a very busy weekend, and I was told to pick up a table outside of my section.  A few minutes later I greeted the group of white, well-dressed guests seated at the table.  One of them, an older gentleman, grabbed my arm and said, “There goes your tip! I guess we’ll take you out back and give you 30 lashes.”

I felt my blood begin to boil. I walked away, declining to wait the table. I knew that this refusal would cost me money—but I didn’t want to accept harassment in order to earn a living.

I had a similar experience while working at Denny’s on Christmas Day. The restaurant was completely dead, and the one table I served gave off an impression that they had just had an altercation at a family get-together. The father asked for a steak so rare it was bleeding. When I served it, he took one look and bellowed, “This steak is frozen! How am I supposed to eat that?” He then threw it at my head.

These experiences haven’t happened in isolation. Incidents like these are the kinds of things servers endure to receive a good tip—or any tip at all. Because the federal tipped minimum wage has remained at $2.13 an hour for the past 25 years, servers are more likely than other workers to live in poverty and rely on some form of public assistance to make ends meet. All the while, multi-billion dollar corporations like Darden (the parent company of Olive Garden) get away with their customers or the government making up the difference through tips or public assistance.

Indeed, having your livelihood dependent on tips creates economic instability. Even when I put in the same number of hours from one month to the next, my earnings can differ by hundreds of dollars. If I have a slow week, I have to put off bills and pay late fees that I can’t afford. I often go from feeling like my family is getting by to wondering if the utilities will be turned off.

Working for tips also devalues the labor of people in the service industry. Servers are paid varying amounts every day based on whether someone else thought they deserved to make enough money to pay their bills or feed their children. You can provide great service to a customer, but if he doesn’t want to pay a decent tip, you lose.

I’ve come to this conclusion: Tips are referred to as gratuity for a reason. They are not meant to substitute for an actual wage.

But this isn’t a problem that should be rectified by the restaurant customer. As social media has come into vogue, I’ve started seeing posts about once a week about how a server at a restaurant was either grossly under-tipped or completely stiffed. The message is usually meant to shame the person who did not tip well and to promote awareness of the economic hardship that it causes. But, instead of fighting for people to tip more, we should be urging our state representatives to eliminate the tipped minimum wage and ensure that restaurants pay all of their workers livable wages.

We sorely need one fair wage for all working Americans. Despite conservative arguments that increases in wages cost jobs, cities like San Francisco that have eliminated the tipped minimum wage have actually seen positive job growth. In fact, raising the minimum wage can boost the wages for workers who earn more than the minimum wage, too. And, if a worker puts in a solid 40-hour workweek, shouldn’t she be able to afford the basic necessities to live?

Change can be unsettling, sure—but even more frightening, for tipped workers like me, is the thought of no change. We need to bridge the gap between those who are profiting in the food industry and their employees who are not, and fight for one fair wage.

Single mom Elizabeth Paredes is the assistant manager of a sandwich shop in Tucson. She’s paid a flat salary of $24,000 per year. While she routinely puts in 50 or more hours each week, she doesn’t earn a single dime of overtime. That’s because, under outdated rules that govern the overtime eligibility of managers, her employer doesn’t have to pay her for the extra hours she works.

When I was a kid growing up in Buffalo, a job like Elizabeth’s was a well-paying, middle-class job. Being a manager meant being in the middle class. And rightly so. Managers supervise people, open and close the store, handle the money, and make important decisions. They should be able to own a home, raise a family and build a nest egg for retirement.

These were middle-class jobs by design. The blueprint was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which gave most Americans the right to a minimum wage and time-and-a-half pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week. The Fair Labor Standards Act was the crown jewel of worker protection and helped build the middle class.

But because of both the erosion of the salary threshold over time and concerted policy choices made by the previous administration, that crown jewel has lost its luster. So we’re taking action on behalf of working people like Elizabeth Paredes.

New rule

Today, the Department of Labor announced a significant change to the overtime rule that simply hasn’t been working for working people. In the process, we’re making it simpler for employers to identify which white-collar workers are covered and owed time-and-a-half for work beyond 40 hours in a week.

For decades, the salary threshold under which all white-collar, salaried workers qualify for overtime has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living. In 1975, 62 percent of full-time salaried workers were eligible for overtime protection based on their pay. Today, only 7 percent are eligible under the outdated salary level. The current salary level is so low that it does not effectively identify which white-collar workers are entitled to overtime protection. That is an economy out of balance.

So we’re fixing it. We have more than doubled the salary threshold — lifting it from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. That means some 35 percent of full-time salaried workers, based on their pay, will now be eligible for overtime.

What does this mean?

It means that Elizabeth and other workers like her will finally be entitled to overtime pay. Whether they’re assistant managers at a restaurant or supervisors in the human resources department, white-collar workers who earn below the new salary threshold have their overtime protections restored.

Employers have options for how they respond to the new rule, and they’re likely to do the following:

• Pay time-and-a-half for overtime work.
• Raise workers’ salaries above the new threshold.
• Limit workers’ hours to 40 per week.
• Some combination of the above.

Who benefits?

Today’s rule change, which takes effect on Dec. 1, will benefit 4.2 million workers, making them newly eligible for overtime protections. It clarifies for another 8.9 million salaried workers that they, too, remain entitled to overtime. Now, millions of these middle-class jobs are more likely to be rewarded with middle-class pay, and the millions of Americans who sacrifice family time to work extra will earn extra. If their employer chooses to send them home instead of paying for the extra hours, then it means extra time for family or other professional pursuits.

If you work full-time in America, you should be able to get by; when you work extra, you should be able to get ahead. That’s the commonsense principle we’re reaffirming today. With today’s update to the overtime rule, Elizabeth Paredes and millions like her will be able to punch their ticket to the middle class.

When my husband was away in Afghanistan for a year, I experienced what being a single mom was really like. Working, taking care of a household, and spending quality time with my toddler tested my patience at times. Now that he’s home, I still work hard to provide for my family and, although I can’t spend as much time with them as I want, I’m lucky to work a job with a paycheck and hours I can count on week to week. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for everyone—too many mothers face a daily struggle of balancing caring for their kids and ever-changing work hours. 

According to a national study from the Center for Popular Democracy, moms either work too much or not enough. In both cases, most moms struggle in low-wage hourly jobs riddled with irregular work hours and unpredictable schedules. These moms are the women who serve your food at local restaurants, who are cashiers at the grocery store down the street, or are health care workers at a nursing facility. In fact, 61 percent of all women in the workforce nationwide hold hourly jobs. These jobs are often in low-wage yet fast-growing sectors such as health care, retail, and food service, and usually pay below $15.

What are the problems for moms working low-wage hourly jobs? As if facing inadequate and unaffordable childcare weren’t enough, these women also lack basic legal protections that would ensure they received adequate notice of their work schedules and the right to decline last-minute changes that throw carefully balanced routines into chaos. Unpredictable work hours are particularly challenging for the many moms who need to coordinate multiple part-time positions.

Fortunately, more and more working moms are coming forward to demand policy solutions that can make their lives less hectic. In Maryland, legislation introduced this year would require employers to post schedules three weeks out so parents could plan child care and other obligations. Under the proposal, workers would also be compensated for last-minute changes that could disrupt family events.

The proposal would also address a critical and underreported problem: the fact that many work part-time not by choice, but because they are forced into it. In fact, 1 out of 4 part-time workers would prefer to work full-time. Workers are often available to work but aren’t scheduled for more hours, often because even more part-time workers are brought on. Working fewer hours every week, in turn, often equates to a lower hourly wage and fewer opportunities compared to what a full-time counterpart receives. To address the dilemma, the legislation would give part-time workers access to full-time positions opening up at their jobs before a company could bring on more employees.

Although we sacrifice and work hard as mothers, many of us struggle. But even so, I wouldn’t trade being a mom for anything in the world—but a little help would be welcomed.

This Mother’s Day, a real gift would be a living wage with work hours we could count on. It’s time elected officials thought of moms across the state and enacted legislation that actually helps us in our day-to-day lives.

Now, that would be a gift worth giving.

In the past, unemployment was criminalized under the rubric of vagrancy prosecutions and related forms of racially-targeted labor control. Today, such practices have returned in new forms. In several contexts people face jail time if they do not work to the government’s satisfaction. How this happens is explored in “Get To Work or Go To Jail,” a report I recently coauthored with colleagues at the UCLA Labor Center and A New Way of Life Reentry Project. In many ways, these work requirements parallel the more familiar ones in public benefits programs, where people risk losing income support if they do not work enough.

The most straightforward examples come from probation, parole, and other forms of criminal justice supervision that operate outside the confines of prison. As Yale Law School professor Fiona Doherty has been documenting, work requirements are a pervasive feature of these systems. Failure to work can violate the terms of supervision—and create a path back to jail. On any given day, some 9,000 Americans are behind bars for violating probation or parole requirements to have a job.

As with work (or work search) requirements in aid programs such as Unemployment Insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), an essential question is always whether lack of work is voluntary or involuntary. In practice, this is a question of labor standards: Which jobs should someone be allowed to reject? Those that pay below the prevailing wage? Have erratic schedules incompatible with childcare? Subject workers to retaliation for organizing?

The function of enforceable work requirements is to get people to take jobs they otherwise wouldn’t, and to set up a system of surveillance to ensure that they do. And this is exactly what happens. For example, a recent study of Texas’s much-touted Noncustodial Parent Choices program found that work requirements enforced by the threat of jail caused employment to increase but wages to decrease. A study of Wisconsin welfare reform found similar downward pressure on earnings.

An even stronger analogy to work requirements in aid programs comes from court-ordered debts, such as child support obligations and criminal justice fines and fees. At the center of the modern debtors’ prison conversation, these debts are deeply linked to labor. The connection arises from the same simple question at the heart of income support programs: Why don’t you have more money? For means-tested benefits, lacking income is why the government gives you money as assistance. For court-ordered debt, lacking income is why you don’t have to give money to the government: the Constitution forbids imprisoning those who simply are unable to pay their debts.  But in both contexts, the suspicion arises that lack of income is “voluntary” if additional earnings could be generated by working more. Notably, that suspicion is thoroughly shaped by racial stereotyping.

Take child support enforcement, for example. State agencies’ collection efforts begin by scrutinizing non-custodial parents’ inability to pay and end by scrutinizing their inability to work.  Most states construe child support obligations as a duty to earn enough to pay.  As a result, a penniless parent can end up behind bars if, as the Supreme Court of California explained, that parent “fails or refuses to seek and accept available employment for which the parent is suited by virtue of education, experience, and physical ability.”  The courts consistently have upheld incarceration for nonwork in the child support context, despite the striking similarities to Jim Crow-era debt peonage practices that the Supreme Court long ago struck down as unconstitutional involuntary servitude. These similarities include shocking disparities of race and class, with African-American fathers ten times more likely than other fathers to be jailed for child support.

Detecting voluntary unemployment is notoriously difficult. The more you distrust those who say they cannot find jobs, the more tempting it is to surveil them. That is one legacy of persistent racial stereotypes concerning labor discipline. This sort of surveillance is a crucial function of employment programs, even when they are bundled with services, which often have dubious value. When participation in employment programs is mandatory, they generally are designed to push people to accept jobs they can already find, or to blame them for not finding any—not to improve their employment prospects in a meaningful way. That framework is explicit in the Obama Administration’s recently proposed child-support regulations, which promote “rapid labor force attachment” and reject “services to promote access to better jobs and careers.” While better than simply locking up noncustodial parents who can’t afford to pay, this “work first” model returns us to the questions of labor standards and diminished bargaining power.

When no jobs are available, the next step is to create a degraded tier of second-class work. Unpaid “workfare” or “work experience” programs have served that function in the years since 1990s welfare reform. Today, we see something similar happening with criminal justice debt. Mandatory “community service” may seem enlightened compared to throwing unemployed people in jail. Similarly, “offering” workfare is arguably better than simply terminating benefits for lack of work, as occurs under SNAP’s harsh “able-bodied adults without dependents” work rules that can cut off assistance even when no work is available.

Thus, a widely touted progressive reform when it comes to court-ordered debts is to offer unpaid community service as an alternative to debtors’ prison. This policy already is in place in Los Angeles, where every year an estimated 100,000 people are ordered to work for free or go to jail. By labeling it “community service,” the authorities attempt to shield this unpaid work from labor and employment protections such as the minimum wage and workers’ compensation for job-related injury. A federal judge upheld a similar policy in a recent New York case.

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As with workfare, these forced labor programs are triply unfair. First, they extract valuable work from citizens while stripping them of fair treatment and respect. Second, they perpetuate an unjust definition of voluntary unemployment. The proper test for willingness to work is willingness to work at a minimally decent job, not willingness to work for free without labor protections. Third, by creating a class of unprotected, coerced labor, they undermine the labor market for everyone. Employers have every incentive to substitute this new labor force for ordinary employees, or to extract concessions from workers by threatening to replace them.  New York City did both under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who cut unionized public sector jobs while turning to a massive workfare program to maintain services.

Welfare reform taught antipoverty advocates to take low-wage work and unemployment seriously. Today, we must take that line of thinking one step further to include racialized mass incarceration, not just as a barrier to good jobs but as an enforcer of bad ones.

“Whenever you feel like it’s probably fine to not tip your server, that’s one more bill stacking up because they’re short on money. This is food for the week that our families will go without because you didn’t think it was necessary, even after asking for everything under the sun and receiving it free of charge, mind you. This is one less basic necessity my daughter needs because even TWO more dollars is too much for you.”

These words from a young, Colorado waitress named Taylar Cordova—accompanied by an image of a zero-tip check for a meal totaling $182—set the internet ablaze this week, receiving thousands of likes, shares, and comments on Facebook and sparking impassioned think pieces about the plight of our nation’s 11 million restaurant workers.

And it couldn’t have been timelier. Thanks to the efforts of industry groups like the National Restaurant Association—or “the other NRA,” as I like to call them—which has stymied efforts to raise wages for restaurant workers, today marks the 25th year the federal tipped minimum wage has been frozen at an abysmal $2.13 per hour. And when you’re paid $2.13 per hour by your employer, or even $5.29 as it is in Colorado, you are completely reliant on tips to pay your bills.

Happy anniversary, everybody!

Twenty-five years is a long time to go without paying a significant portion of your workers—servers, bussers, hosts, bartenders—at least the minimum wage, let alone a wage that enables a family to make ends meet. And as a result, servers are twice as likely to need food stamps than the rest of the U.S. workforce, and three times as likely to live in poverty. The restaurant industry now includes 7 of the 10 lowest paying jobs in the country.

And the fact that it’s been 25 years isn’t even the half of it. In fact, it’s only about a quarter of it. Since the creation of the minimum wage almost a century ago, federal law has mandated that tipped workers be paid less than everyone else, a practice rooted in American slavery, when employers didn’t want to pay newly freed slaves a wage. Why? Because of the undue and enduring influence of our friends at the NRA.

The NRA claims to represent small independent businesses, but APRIL FOOLS! It’s actually a front group for multinational corporations like Darden (Olive Garden), DineEquity (Applebee’s/IHOP), and Bloomin’ Brands (Outback Steakhouse). Despite the corporate welfare that these companies manage to secure for themselves, as many as 50 percent of their employees are near the poverty level and must access an array of public assistance programs—at a cost of over $9 million to taxpayers.

And thus, although heart-wrenching and unacceptable, Taylar Cordova’s story is not unique. In my travels and after talking with hundreds of restaurant workers, I’ve met countless women like Taylar—mothers working long hours to put food on the tables of others, all the while uncertain whether they’ll be able to afford food for their own tables later that night.

All Work and No Pay from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

All of these stories contradict the prevailing myth that tipped workers are largely white men working at fine-dining establishments, earning nearly six figures for their efforts. In reality, nearly 70 percent of tipped restaurant workers are women, 30 percent of whom are mothers, working in casual dining establishments like Denny’s, the Olive Garden, or, in Taylar’s case, PF Chang’s. These workers—42 percent of whom are people of color—also experience disproportionate rates of poverty, financial insecurity, and discrimination.

And then there’s the sexual harassment. The restaurant industry is the single largest source of sexual harassment claims in the country. What’s more, workers in states that pay the lowest possible tipped wage of $2.13 per hour experience harassment at twice the rate of their counterparts. Conversely, tipped women workers in states that have eliminated the subminimum wage are less likely to experience sexual harassment. The tipped minimum wage, combined with the practice of tipping, forces women servers to tolerate inappropriate behavior from customers, coworkers and managers in order to survive.

Altogether, this isn’t just about the huge restaurant corporations lining their own pockets. With the lives of over 11 million restaurant workers hanging in the balance, their impact is seismic. Their obstructionist efforts have deep consequences and keep the restaurant industry and our nation at large from moving in a direction that promotes equality across racial, gender, and economic lines.

But after years of hard work, and tireless efforts by workers and their allies, stories like Taylar’s are resonating because a national movement for One Fair Wage is gaining incredible momentum. The seven states that have already eliminated the two-tiered minimum wage system (including California and most of the West Coast) account for over one million tipped workers, and their restaurant industries are flourishing. In fact, California is taking a step further; state legislators announced this week they are moving forward with a plan to increase the minimum wage for all workers to $15 per hour. Many other states, including New York, Maine, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, plus Washington D.C., are considering wage increases. I urge them not to leave out women and people of color; tipped workers deserve a raise, too.

From Danny Meyer to Amy Schumer, the plight of employees who earn tips is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. It’s time for our legislators to catch up with the rest of America and establish one fair wage for all workers. We hope that on this special 25th anniversary, we’ll finally give the restaurant industry a gift it deserves: a fair wage that ensures dignity and justice for the tens of thousands of hardworking employees who make the restaurant industry what it is.

We got a chance to see this story in practice in the boom of the late 1990s, when the unemployment rate fell to its lowest levels in almost three decades, settling at a year-round average of four percent in 2000, the peak year of the boom. In this period, wages rose rapidly at all points along the income distribution, with workers at the bottom of the ladder actually achieving the largest gains.

The same principle would apply today, with the gains of a tight labor market going disproportionately to the most disadvantaged. The unemployment rate for African-Americans is typically two to two-and-a-half times that of whites. This means if we can lower the unemployment rate for whites by one percentage point, it is likely that the unemployment rate for African-Americans will fall by two percentage points. For African-American teens, the ratio hovers near six to one, meaning that a one percentage point drop in the white unemployment rate is likely to be associated with a six percentage point drop in the unemployment rate for African-American teens.

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But even if we accept that full employment is especially important for the most disadvantaged groups, there is still the question of how we get there. At present, the biggest obstacle to higher levels of employment is inadequate demand for goods and services in the economy. If there were more demand, we would see more people employed.

The first place to turn to for policies that boost demand and employment is the Federal Reserve Board. While the Fed did take extraordinary measures in an attempt to boost the economy during the downturn, its current policy of raising interest rates goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Higher interest rates make it more expensive to buy a car or house. They also discourage companies from increasing investment in equipment, software, and buildings, and deter state and local governments from investing in infrastructure. Higher interest rates also prevent people from refinancing mortgages, which would save them money on their monthly payments.

The reason the Fed raises interest rates is to slow the economy and prevent inflation. While there are indeed times when inflation could be a problem, our economy isn’t currently suffering from excessive inflation—nor is it in danger of doing so any time soon. In this context, any Fed rate hikes will needlessly slow the economy and prevent people from getting jobs. And while the small rate hike in December likely did not have much negative effect on the economy, any further rate hikes almost certainly would seriously impede growth. It is therefore important that the Fed exercise caution with any future rate hikes and only take this step if there is a real threat of inflation.

But even if the Fed can be persuaded not to restrain growth, we will still likely need more demand in the economy to return to full employment. The most obvious way to generate demand is with more government spending, ideally through public investment. This approach has the great advantage of creating more jobs today and making ourselves richer in the future. For example, spending to promote clean energy—whether in the form of research or subsidies for the use of solar and wind power—will lessen the damage that we do to the environment, leaving less harm for future generations to deal with. Spending on physical infrastructure and mass transit will speed transportation times and reduce gas use. Money for education will give us a better trained and more productive work force.

We can also pursue full employment by reducing our trade deficit, which is running at an annual rate of more than $500 billion, or a bit less than three percent of GDP. This is money that is creating demand in other countries, while more balanced trade would create greater demand in the United States. Ordinarily the mechanism for reducing the trade deficit is a lower value for the dollar. That reduces the price of U.S. exports for people living abroad while raising the price of imported goods for people living in the United States. The result is that we export more and import less, bringing the trade deficit closer to balance and creating jobs.

However, lowering the value of the dollar is probably not a plausible strategy in the current world economy. With most of our major trading partners experiencing weaker growth than the United States or even recessions, we cannot expect them to absorb a hit to their trade balance. But we should keep a lower valued dollar on the to-do list for better economic times since the trade deficit is a key obstacle to maintaining full employment.

Finally, we can move towards full employment by reducing the supply of labor, specifically by lowering the average number of hours that people work. It used to be the case that workers took a portion of the benefits of productivity growth in the form of more leisure. While that has not been true in the United States to any great extent over the last four decades, workers in other wealthy countries have continued to see reductions in the length of the average work year and/or workweek.

Indeed, across Europe, four to six weeks of paid vacation annually is standard. Workers have paid sick days as well. By reducing the number of hours per worker, there is increased demand for more workers. This story explains how Germany managed to lower its unemployment rate in between 2008 and 2009 even though it experienced a more severe recession than did the United States. By promoting policies that spread work among more workers, the government can hope to create a tighter labor market, which will also give workers the bargaining power they need to obtain higher wages.

Although full employment is not the complete solution to poverty, reaching it would go a long way. It should also be an area of bipartisan agreement. After all, conservatives are supposed to like the idea of people working hard to lift themselves up. But they can only work hard if jobs are available, and they can only lift themselves up if their wages are just.

Minnesota, ranked as the largest slaughterer of turkeys in the nation, has long been an epicenter of the American meatpacking industry. The state is home to 33 major meatpacking plants, and, with just over 12,000 workers in the sector, boasts the highest concentration of jobs in the industry nationwide. But over the past few decades, as plants began to crop up in rural areas and small cities far removed from the influence of urban unions, these jobs have grown less secure. Today, a mere nine plants in the state are organized.

It is clear that the rest stand to benefit from collective bargaining. The industry ranks as one of the most dangerous in the country, recording almost 39,800 nonfatal injuries nationwide—or 7.5 cases per every 100 full-time workers in 2008. Workers can also be exposed to toxic levels of pathogens and chemicals, like ammonia.

Minnesota factories are no exception to these safety hazards. At a plant operated by turkey giant Jennie-O in Melrose—a small city 100 miles northwest of Minneapolis—injuries are not uncommon. In 2006, for example, an employee was crushed to death while cleaning out a machine. Other workers report being harmed by excessive speeds on production lines, says Ahmed Ali, who advocates for employees at the Melrose plant as a Lead Staff Organizer at the Greater Minnesota Worker Center. According to Ali, lines often run at speeds that are double the industry averages, which can lead to repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. Through a spokesperson, Hormel—Jennie-O’s parent company—says that line speeds at the Melrose plant comply with government standards.

But Omer Hassan, a former worker at the Melrose plant, claims that excessive line speeds led him to develop a musculoskeletal injury that rendered his right hand inoperative. According to Hassan, he still suffers “severe pain” on his right side. Following the injury, he took time off to see a doctor and says he was denied pay for missing work. He was subsequently fired in August 2015, which has jeopardized his ability to provide for himself and his mother. As he told TalkPoverty, “It has been difficult for me and for my mom. I have always had a job and brought home a paycheck. That’s all gone for now.” Hormel did not comment on this specific case, but said that in the event of an injury, employees are given “suitable alternative duties” while they recuperate.

These poor labor conditions extend beyond Melrose. Barbara, whose name has been changed to protect anonymity, is an employee of the Gold’N Plump chicken plant in St. Cloud. She says the production line there is like a “flowing, raging river.” Workers who cannot keep up are asked to sign a warning letter or are even terminated on the spot. According to Barbara, those who request to use the restroom more than three times a month are also asked to sign a warning letter—a practice that would run contrary to state law, which requires an option for a bathroom break every four consecutive hours of work. Through a spokesperson, Gold’N Plump said that the company provides regularly scheduled breaks for workers and recognizes that “each person is unique, which may mean accommodating additional restroom breaks” for some. However, the company did not deny that it issues warning letters for additional bathroom use.

On top of these alleged abuses in the industry, wages are low. According to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, in Kandiyohi, Meeker, Renville, and McLeod counties, annual median wages for slaughterers and meatpackers amount to $27,909, which is just above the federal poverty line for a family of four. By contrast, Hormel CEO Jeffrey Ettinger reportedly took home more than $13 million in total compensation in 2014.

Given these conditions, the need for stronger protections for workers is clear. In Watonwan County, workers at the Butterfield Foods chicken slaughter plant are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1161. According to Darin Rehnelt, a representative for the union, UCFW Local 1161 has successfully negotiated grievance procedures to protect workers against unlawful termination, as well as nine paid holidays a year, time-and-a-half after eight hours, and double-time on Sundays. Rehnelt says that collective bargaining has also allowed workers to set up internal structures to increase safety. Union stewards monitor line speeds and labor conditions, and workers can share concerns with a health and safety committee. If laborers are injured, they have recourse to a union-provided attorney who specializes in workers’ compensation law.

The striking contrast between the plants demonstrates some of the immediate benefits of unionization, such as increased wages and benefits. But on a broader level, unions are also key to ensuring economic and social mobility. According to the Center for American Progress, low-income children are more upwardly mobile in areas with higher rates of union membership. And unions also play a central role in combating income inequality; lower rates of unionization are associated with an increased share of income going to the wealthiest Americans.

Our poultry need not be consumed at the cost of workers’ dignity. By building a strong labor movement at the company, state, and federal level, progressives can change a status quo predicated on giving workers a raw deal.

The Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education bill cuts these programs by $3.7 billion below last year’s level.  Moreover, these cuts would compound years of flat or shrinking funding, due largely to the tight funding cap on non-defense discretionary spending of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), so that total funding for programs in this bill would fall to roughly one-sixth below its 2010 value, adjusted for inflation.

Major cuts include the following:

• Education: The bill cuts federal education programs, many of which serve low- and moderate-income students, by $2.5 billion. In particular, funding for elementary, secondary, and preschool education programs would fall to one-fifth below its 2010 inflation-adjusted level.  The bill would eliminate more than two dozen education programs, including Preschool Development Grants, which give states money to build or expand high-quality preschool programs in high-need communities, and School Improvement Grants, which provide grant funding to boost student achievement in low-performing schools.

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): The bill cuts CMS funding by $649 million, or roughly one-sixth. CMS operates Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and it implements many aspects of health reform, including the federally run health insurance marketplaces and health reform’s consumer protections. That cut, along with language that would stop HHS from implementing most of health reform, would effectively block most assistance that helps low- and moderate-income people ; it could also hamper Medicare operations.  All told, CMS would have less funding than in 2010, before health reform took effect — and that’s before adjusting for inflation or Medicare’s growing numbers of beneficiaries.

• Job training: The bill cuts job training funding by $135 million which, after years of deep cuts, brings funding to 23 percent below its 2010 level, adjusted for inflation. The bill’s main job training cut comes from reducing by two-thirds funding that provides extra help in responding to large disruptions such as plant closings, mass layoffs, and natural disasters, as well as to support demonstration projects and technical assistance.

• “Title X” family planning: The bill eliminates all funding, which totaled $286 million in 2015, for Title X, which supports clinics that offer family planning and related preventive health services, such as screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. The funding is a key source of revenue for these clinics, which reduce or eliminate charges for low-income patients (many of them uninsured). The clinics served more than 4.5 million patients, according to HHS, and helped avert an estimated 870,000 unintended pregnancies in 2013.

• The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS): The bill cuts CNCS funding by $367 million, or more than one-third. The cuts primarily target AmeriCorps, which provides funding for public service jobs, frequently in economically disadvantaged areas. These cuts would shrink the number of AmeriCorps positions and threaten the modest educational stipend that AmeriCorps workers receive after completing a year of public service work.

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The bill does include some much-needed increases in key investments, such as medical research and special education funding.  But, given the bill’s reduced funding levels overall, those increases are only possible because of the damaging cuts it makes to other areas.

The President and congressional Democrats have pushed to raise the BCA’s caps for both non-defense and defense spending, offset by a mix of other cuts and revenue increases.  But congressional Republicans — who run both the House and Senate — have stuck to these tight caps in this year’s budget process for non-defense programs (while using a gimmick to evade the cap on defense).  With the existing cap on appropriations for non-defense programs in place, there’s little chance of adequately funding key investments in labor, health, and education programs in 2016.

The quick and obvious answer to the question of how to address homelessness is to provide permanent housing to those who need it. A New Yorker article published last fall about Utah’s wildly successfully policy of giving housing to people who are homeless went viral on social media. Last month, Seattle officials announced plans to open three “tent cities” to provide shelter to people who are homeless. In addition, President Obama’s plan to end homelessness among veterans has had success, in part, because of its focus on immediately placing people who are homeless into permanent housing without requiring them to first complete an alcohol or drug treatment program.

There is no question that one of the keys to reducing homelessness among individuals and families is to provide them with housing. But much like health reform advocates known as “upstreamists” want to see health insurers pay for prevention initiatives that will keep people healthy, those working to end homelessness know that the ultimate solution must include reforms that will prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

For example, a veteran who is able to find employment is much less likely to experience homelessness than one who can’t land a job in the first place. A single parent with two school age children needs to earn at least $29.30 an hour (in Massachusetts) in order to dramatically lessen the likelihood of experiencing homelessness or housing instability that that same parent would face earning minimum wage. And a person trying to find housing after a period of incarceration is unlikely to succeed unless he or she is also able to find employment, a task that may prove difficult due to the common practice of potential employers discriminating against applicants who have criminal records.

In order to achieve longer-term success in reducing homelessness, we should focus on three areas:

Community support for those trying to live independently after a period of incarceration.

People with criminal records face barriers to employment due to discrimination. It’s hard to think of anyone better situated to make the successful transition from prison than Piper Kerman, author of the memoir Orange Is the New Black upon which the successful Netflix series is based. When Kerman sought to rebuild her life after her release from prison, she enjoyed the support of family and friends, and had the advantage of past career accomplishments. Yet in multiple interviews, she cites one factor as being the most important in her post-incarceration success: the job that a friend had waiting for her, and which she was able to begin just one week after leaving prison. Very few of those emerging from prison have a job waiting for them. As they seek employment, many will need intensive skills training, as well as support connecting them with health care providers and, if needed, substance abuse programs. Further, we need reforms that address the many barriers formerly incarcerated people face, with regard to employment, housing, public assistance, education and training, building good credit, and more.

 Job skills training for the long-term unemployed.

It takes marketable skills in local, growing industries to land a job that will lift someone out of homelessness―and keep them housed. Such training must run the gamut from classroom-based instruction in computer and customer service skills to actual employment via internships or social enterprises focused on providing real world work experience. Robust training programs will also support job seekers throughout the employment application and interview process, offer meaningful references and networking opportunities, and provide ongoing support during the inevitable ups and downs of employment.

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Support for those who are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness.

Veterans, single mothers living in poverty, and individuals dealing with substance abuse, particularly those who are also living in poverty, are all disproportionately likely to become homeless, while at the same time facing multiple barriers to employment. To reduce their risk, we need more targeted outreach with services tailored to meet the needs of these groups, which can help them stabilize their lives so that they never become homeless in the first place. These services include assistance accessing health care, including mental health care and substance use recovery programs; legal assistance with collecting financial support from estranged or divorced partners; and affordable daycare.

While it is critical that we provide housing to reduce homelessness among individuals and families, the ultimate solution to ending homelessness must involve preventing it from occurring in the first place. That means reliable employment that pays decent wages—it means talking jobs as well as homes.

This problem of low employment rates among reentering citizens is simply too large to ignore. As many as one hundred million adults in the United States have criminal records. People with criminal backgrounds face all the same frustrations as other job seekers: a sluggish job market; a low response rate to applications; and the stigma of long term unemployment. However, in my role recruiting businesses willing to consider reentering citizens for employment, I have seen that there are additional barriers for people with criminal records that make job-seeking especially frustrating and disheartening.

One common obstacle to employment is often the lack of appropriate identification.   Many individuals’ personal effects go missing during the process of arrest and incarceration or due to the instability of their housing. Getting the appropriate documentation to replace lost identification can be difficult and time-consuming, especially from out-of-state agencies. This seemingly simple process can delay the start of a job search for weeks or months. As a consequence of this delay, many former offenders end up settling for informal work, putting themselves at risk for both wage theft and further involvement with the justice system.

However, stereotypes and myths remain the biggest barriers to reentry employment. Many believe “once a criminal, always a criminal,” despite studies that show that past crimes are not necessarily predictors of future actions. And, since background checks have become relatively inexpensive and easy to access through the Internet, the ability of potential employers to act on these stereotypes and myths to discriminate against people based on a criminal record has increased. Additionally, many commercially available background checks contain errors that applicants struggle to refute. Most retail chains now do background checks and, as a result, entry-level jobs that used to be available to reentering citizens are now out of reach. Further, many national companies have now outsourced this hiring process so local managers have no control over whether to hire someone with a criminal background. They simply receive an application marked hirable or un-hirable. For this reason, individuals returning from incarceration are less able to depend on their existing network to help them find employment.

In contrast, food service and building trades are two fields with relatively low barriers to entry. However, both job types are also very physically demanding and too often fail to provide living wages. Workers in building trades are also often required to have both a valid driver’s license and a working vehicle, resources that are often out of reach for people coming out of jail or prison.

When the odds are stacked so heavily against people with criminal records, we can’t be surprised that recidivism is too often the result. But we also have to wonder how much of it could be avoided if people were able to find jobs and support themselves?

Here are some steps we can take right now to improve employment outcomes for reentering citizens:

1. For businesses, if you have had positive experiences hiring reentering citizens, follow the example of Alsco, and Virgin Companies and talk about it. If you are interested in considering an ex-offender, contact a local reentry organization. This list can help you get started.

2. Publicize the facts about people with criminal backgrounds and share stories about people who have successfully negotiated reentry; also, increase employers’ awareness of resources like the Federal Bonding Program and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit that support second chance hiring.

3. Make basic computer literacy and modern job search techniques a part of reentry programming in prisons and jails. Also, ensure that job training programs are matched to employment growth areas and are in fields that do not have significant restrictions for ex-offenders. (For example, HVAC is a popular training program in many facilities, but companies that hire people to go into other’s homes are reluctant to hire anyone with a theft charge or offense involving violence or sexual assault.)

4. Finally, we need to see a movement to support local and national businesses that positively engage in second chance hiring, a kind of reverse boycott. This would help assure business owners that they will not be negatively affected by second chance hiring and that it could even help them gain popular support.

For the reasons outlined above, communities decimated by mass incarceration face the long-term, lingering effects of severe underemployment. If we are to address the root causes of inter-generational poverty, we must dismantle the barriers formerly incarcerated citizens face as they strive for self-sufficiency and financial security by obtaining a job. Most reentering citizens are able and eager to work and it makes no sense to lock them out of the job market.

Alyssa Peterson: Can you explain the mission of D.C. Central Kitchen (DCCK)?

Mike Curtin: We run a whole portfolio of social enterprise programs including catering and a locally-sourced, scratch-cooked school [meals] service here in D.C.

We also run culinary job training classes for men and women with histories of incarceration, addiction, abuse, homelessness, and chronic unemployment. We work with them intensely for 14 weeks, and empower them to find employment in the hospitality sector. If we have openings available, we will hire job training program graduates [for our social enterprise] programs… One of the beautiful things about [DCCK] is that 45% of our 150 employees are graduates of our program.

Our basic model is using what’s existing around us; whether that’s food that’s going to be thrown away, or people that have been marginalized, or kitchens that aren’t being used, or produce from farms that isn’t commercially viable because it’s aesthetically or geometrically challenged– it’s too big, or too small, or too skinny, it doesn’t fit in the right box.

We prepare 5,000 meals a day out of our main kitchen, using predominantly food that would have otherwise been thrown away from restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, food wholesalers, food producers, and farms. We then send the meals we prepare to agencies [(non-profits and shelters)] that are working to empower and liberate their clients. We are very intentional about this model. Our goal isn’t to simply pass out food in the hopes that someday that will end hunger. We’re never going to feed our way out of hunger.

Alyssa: In terms of empowering and liberating clients, do you have an example of that?

Mike Curtin: The goal is to help people get to the place of self-sufficiency so that they have a job that pays a good wage that hopefully has benefits. One of the things that we often forget when we talk about civil rights leaders in the past, such as Dr. King, Gandhi, Chavez, or Bobby Kennedy, is that these folks were not just talking about physical inclusion.

Dr. King was not fighting and ultimately dying for the right for anyone to walk into any restaurant and sit at any table; [it] was for the right for anyone to walk into any restaurant, to sit at any table, and to be able to afford that meal. So it’s the economic freedom and the economic inclusion that we’re looking for.

For example, a student comes from a shelter into our training program. They’ve been incarcerated, maybe in a halfway house, maybe in prison for 30 years. Maybe this person is in their 50s and has never had a job. Maybe this person has children. And they come to us, and they go through the training program, and they get a job. And they get out of the halfway house. They get their own apartment. They support their families. That’s empowerment. That’s liberation. It’s a small start, but it’s a start.

Some of the most rewarding times for us are when graduates come in and show a gas bill or a lease they just signed. Someone may come in with a new set of keys to a house, and the only people that they’ve known that have had keys for the last 30 years were prison guards.

Alyssa: What separates your training program from others and also contributes to its success?

Mike Curtin: I think one of the things that makes the program different is that it’s part of this larger enterprise. People that work here in the kitchen are graduates of [our training] program. The woman who’s the director of that program was a heroin addict for 20 years. She got clean and went to culinary school and then eventually ended up coming here.

Even if some of us don’t have those particular stories, all of us come here a little broken, including myself. But I’ve been lucky to live in safe communities, go to good schools, and have a stable family life. I made a lot of mistakes, but I always had someone put me back on track.

A lot of the folks that come to us didn’t have those privileges. For that reason, we meet people where they are. In the old charity model in America, there’s one group—typically the wealthier, white group— saying, “Thank goodness that we’re here for you poor, uneducated, and formerly incarcerated people. Now we’re going to save you. Now we’re going to help you.”

In contrast, we really try to create this environment where we’re all around this same table. [It] will only work if we work together, regardless of whether a person is a felon, an addict, or homeless. We’re all cutting the same carrots, and we’re all learning how to do this together.

Alyssa: Does DCCK do a lot of advocacy in D.C.? Were you involved in the Ban the Box fight, for example?

Mike Curtin: We were. We are not an advocacy organization per se, [but] we work very closely with other organizations in town that are advocacy organizations.

Ban the Box was a big thing for us. We’ve been banging that drum for at least ten years. We know that the majority of people who get out of prison reoffend and go back again mostly because they can’t get a job. At DCCK, our recidivism rate is less than 2.5% because people get jobs, and they feel like they’re part of something bigger. They want to be part of the community. Nobody wants to be in prison, [and] nobody wants to live in the shelter.

Alyssa: It seems like your business model differs markedly from companies that don’t necessarily share your purpose. Why do you pay good wages and benefits as a company?

Mike Curtin: I don’t think we can expect other employers to provide benefits and pay living wages if we don’t do it ourselves. What we want to do is act as a model for what’s possible.

We start everyone at a living wage. We paid 100% of health insurance long before the ACA [(Affordable Care Act)] was ever around. Everyone has short-term and long-term disability insurance and a life insurance policy. We make a 50% match to every dollar that someone contributes to our 401k plan. We have a very liberal, very generous paid vacation and time off policy. Everyone who works here…from the newest hourly employer to myself has the exact same benefits.

However, in many ways we have an advantage. We are a mission-motivated business. We’re in business not to make dollars, but to make change in both senses of that word. We’re okay if we run our businesses, and we break even because the act of running that impact-oriented business has accomplished many of our goals.

We want business in general and others to think more like we do. A lot of people are saying now that non-profits need to think and act more like businesses. To a certain degree, yes. We have payroll to make just like everyone else. We have bills to pay, gas to put in our trucks, uniforms to buy, and food to purchase. But I think the role of non-profits—particularly non-profits who are operating social enterprises—is to get businesses to think more like non-profits and to recognize the value of these multiple bottom lines.

Many of us who work in the criminal justice system have come to understand the profound connection between poverty and mass incarceration.  Put simply, individuals with criminal histories – even minor ones – find it exceedingly difficult to enter the workforce and provide for their families.  One pragmatic response to this problem is to incarcerate fewer people, particularly in local jails.

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Without BJI, Rick and Meagan probably would have spent considerable time at Rikers Island, New York City’s jail.  A recent report from the Independent Budget Office documents that the City’s annual cost per inmate at Rikers is $168,000 – a significant expenditure at a time of rising public needs and increasing public concern about the overuse of incarceration.  While the institutional costs of incarceration are enormous, the human toll is even greater.  And for people struggling with limited financial resources, time in jail means time away from school, work, family, and other social supports, exacerbating an already formidable constellation of challenges to economic mobility.

To change all that, Paul completed a construction apprenticeship program. Less than two weeks after he graduated, Paul had strong prospects with a construction company and a major utility company. Amidst all this good news, however, Paul received a letter that brought his forward momentum to a halt.

A “Notice of Proposed Revocation” informed Paul that his driver’s license could be revoked because of overdue child support payments. Paul had known about the child support order, but it simply wasn’t something he could afford to pay. The amount was based on his salary at a job he had lost more than a year before the order was set. Paul made cash payments directly to the child’s mother whenever he could, not realizing that those payments “didn’t count” because he was supposed to make them through the District government. After months without income he ran out of money to make any payments. But if Paul lost his license, none of the positions for which he now qualified would be available to him, and he’d be right back where he started – unable to pay his child support. Now what?

We must break the underlying legal barriers to employment.

It is no secret that getting and keeping a stable job, let alone a job that pays a living wage, is already a challenge for far too many people living in poverty in D.C. and across the nation. Black workers and young workers were hit particularly hard by the recession, and unemployment rates for several groups of workers remain high today, including those without a college degree. While the overall unemployment level in the District is 7.5%, unemployment levels in Wards 5, 7, and 8 hover in the 15 to 20% range, with poverty rates as high as 25% (Ward 7) and 34% (Ward 8).

D.C. residents and advocates have improved the pathway to jobs with decent wages in part through successful efforts to raise the minimum wage, strengthen wage theft laws, remove criminal history questions from job applications, and develop employment training programs like the construction apprenticeship sought out by Paul. But, as Paul’s story reveals, these efforts aren’t always enough.

Among the legal barriers to employment are: criminal or arrest records, poor or inaccurate credit reports, child support arrears and suspended drivers’ licenses, domestic violence, prior homelessness or lack of stable housing, and other issues that may appear unrelated to employment. These barriers may distract even the most dedicated job seekers from their search, prevent a skill-based assessment of their application, threaten the credentials that make them eligible for sought-after positions, and hinder their ability to keep employment once it is secured.

As Paul’s story shows, overdue child support payments can cause job seekers to lose their driver’s licenses, contribute to negative credit reports, and ultimately can lead to jail time. Prior arrests and convictions may cause employers to reject an applicant without ever assessing whether that conviction is relevant to job performance. Ongoing domestic violence, custody disputes, unstable housing, and financial instability due to debt and predatory lending can all cause significant disruption to job searches and job retention.

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For example, how does someone who is homeless or couch surfing receive information from potential employers? Or complete an application form that requires an address? Or maintain appropriate clothing for an interview?  How can a mother whose children are chronically ill from sub-standard housing conditions avoid absenteeism?  The longer these issues persist, the more likely they are to affect job seekers and workers who lack other resources to help them cope with financial stress.  And what happens when these vulnerable workers do not receive the wages they are due or are subject to excessive garnishments?

These concerns do not need to be faced alone. In many cases, civil legal services can help remove these barriers by:

• Securing the restoration of driver’s licenses
• Overcoming problems associated with arrest or conviction records, including record sealing, improper employer inquiries, mistaken identities or other inaccuracies
• Providing information about credit records, correcting inaccuracies, and advising how to respond to prospective employer inquiries
• Advocating for individuals whose child support payments are set unreasonably high or have become overdue, particularly when the individual is threatened with incarceration or loss of a driver’s license
• Securing protection or resolving problems associated with domestic violence, child custody disputes, and child support
• Improving and stabilizing housing and addressing health problems affecting family members, including those caused by dangerous living conditions
• Recovering unpaid wages and remedying other forms of workplace mistreatment

Not long after Paul received notice that his driver’s license might be revoked, his apprenticeship program hosted attorneys from Neighborhood Legal Services Program (NLSP).  The attorneys informed the trainees about the civil legal underpinnings of common hurdles facing job seekers. After participating in the presentation, Paul sought NLSP help.  An attorney prevented the suspension of Paul’s license and is now helping him secure a child support payment plan that more closely matches the amount he is currently able to pay. Shortly after he found out his license was safe, Paul got the flagger job on a construction crew, his first full-time position since 2011.

Advocating for a living wage and job training is necessary, but is also insufficient for many people who are seeking to enter or stay in the workforce.  That’s one reason why access to civil legal aid is so critical to workforce development and anti-poverty efforts. Working closely with community groups, social service agencies, and job training programs, civil legal aid programs can help job seekers identify and break these legal barriers to employment.

In my book, Part of the Family: Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers, and the Battle for Domestic Workers’ Rights, I discuss how domestic workers have successfully persuaded state and federal policymakers to include domestic workers within basic labor protections such as overtime. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), enacted in 1938, deliberately excluded domestic workers. This type of gendered exclusion results in higher levels of poverty for women. Domestic workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States.  Since our nation’s earliest days they have been excluded from basic labor protections, in large part because the work of the domestic sphere — dominated by women — has long been considered not “real” work.

In recent years, amid the economic turmoil so many Americans are experiencing, the message that domestic work is real work has begun to resonate with some policymakers. In 2010, the New York state legislature enacted the nation’s first domestic workers’ bill of rights, ensuring overtime, rest breaks and disability benefits for the state’s domestic workers. California followed suit in 2013 (though the legislative path wasn’t easy, with bills vetoed in 2006 and 2012). Hawaii also enacted legislation in 2013 that expands overtime protections for domestic workers. Massachusetts just enacted legislation that ensures a day of rest per week and protection from harassment on the job. Critically, President Obama and former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis finally reversed the exclusion of domestic workers from the FLSA. These regulations would ensure that domestic workers are protected under wage and hour laws, and, barring delays, will be effective in 2015.

During these legislative battles, advocates saw clear shifts in how legislators understood the issue of domestic workers’ rights. New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver originally refused to bring the state bill of rights to the assembly floor. But over time he was persuaded to support the legislation, and upon enactment, he noted, “This bill rights a wrong that began when domestic workers were excluded from the labor protections created by the New Deal and brings us one step closer to our goal of dignity and fairness for all workers across this state.”

Clearly, the end goal is not just the new regulations. These campaigns for domestic workers’ rights help change the way that all of us — including our legislators — think about the value of workers. The movement is part of a larger movement demanding that all workers be paid a living wage; receive paid sick days that are good for workers and public health; and have the right to paid family leave that is critical for workers and those who need their care.

There may continue to be setbacks — such as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Harris v. Quinn on June 30, which weakened the collective bargaining power of many domestic workers. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t reason for optimism. The heightened awareness among policymakers alone is a signal of progress, though it has to be sustained. My book advocates for more funding for community organizers who work hard to ensure that workers are aware of their rights and that new laws are enforced. Shining a light on emerging activism and its successes is also crucial.

The narrative of the economic collapse can indeed evolve into a better story – one in which the Great Recession eventually led to improved economic conditions for women and for all workers.

As hard as it still is sometimes for her to make ends meet, Xochitl thinks more about her co-worker, a single mom with two children, who is paid a lot less. Almost her entire paycheck is spent on rent and childcare. Last week, her co-worker – and more than one hundred thousand workers like her – got a well-deserved raise when the Seattle City Council voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

This vote has been a long time coming. While it took bold leadership from the City Council and Mayor Ed Murray, this achievement is about more than politicians. Through this victory, Seattle has demonstrated that when diverse groups unite – community organizations like OneAmerica Votes and Washington CAN!­, labor and faith-based groups, and the small business community – we are a force to be reckoned with.

It was nearly two decades ago that a coalition of community and labor groups came together to raise Washington state’s minimum wage and index it to inflation, giving Washington State the distinction of having the highest minimum wage in the country.

But that wasn’t enough. At less than $10 an hour, the state’s minimum wage still left many people living in Seattle unable to afford life’s basic necessities, and it was clear from workers that we had to set the bar higher. From them we heard the demand, “Fight for $15,” and we took up the challenge. What once seemed impossible is now a reality.

Two years ago Seattle workers enjoyed a similar victory, when the small business community joined us in the fight to win paid sick days for workers – and win we did.

Last year, community groups and labor unions began the Fight for $15 by setting our sights on SeaTac, the city outside of Seattle that’s home to the state’s major airport. This effort built on an ongoing campaign to raise the wages and improve the working conditions of workers at the airport and Port of Seattle.  Last November SeaTac residents voted to raise the pay for more than 6,000 low-wage workers to $15 an hour.

But the Fight for $15 really took off last year with the fast food workers striking throughout the country.

And as the campaign gained momentum, politicians’ ears perked up. They realized that raising the minimum wage was a winning issue and that they shouldn’t stop there. More and more, elected leaders were noticing that platforms based on higher wages and good jobs help win votes at the ballot box.

Elected leaders are now paying attention to the young, single women and minorities – the “rising American electorate,” as they were dubbed by the Obama campaign – who suffered the greatest harm during the economic downturn. These individuals are the ones who have the most to gain from economic policies – and policymakers – that value people who work.

So we’re definitely onto something here in Seattle.

We know our economy works best from the bottom up, not the top down.  The plan to raise the minimum wage in Seattle recognizes that our local economy is stronger when low-income and middle class families have greater economic security and more money to spend. There will be a $2.9 billion stimulus to low-wage worker households in the Seattle region as a direct result of this wage hike.

The vote here in Seattle has energized the growing national debate over income inequality in America.

Those at the very top have built a system in which their wealth is created by people who are paid meager wages under despairing conditions. Make no mistake – Wall Street, big banks, corporate CEOs and many of the wealthiest members of our society reap huge rewards because they pay other workers poverty wages.

Fights across America for higher wages, better working conditions, and benefits are about building an economy that creates prosperity for all, especially the 106 million Americans – more than one in three of us – who live at or near the federal poverty line, on less than about $37,000 annually for a family of three, struggling to afford the basics.

The message of the Seattle victory is clear: Working people are demanding  – through a diverse coalition with a common voice – that they be paid what they have rightfully earned.

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For too long, threats and intimidation – whether overt or lurking below the surface – have confined low-wage workers to a system that essentially exploits their work and transfers the wealth that they create to the top.  This comes at a real cost to the economy.  Despite the fact that productivity in this country has surged over the past 30 years, wages have stagnated, leaving workers less able to provide for their families, and less able to purchase goods and services which promote economic growth and good jobs in their communities.

Seattle is showing that this does not have to be the predominant economic narrative. We know how to build an economy that no longer produces millions of workers who cannot afford even the basics.

Our goal must be to make sure every person in our nation has access to a good job.  A good job means a living wage, decent benefits and workplace protections.  It means much greater equality in compensation between men and women and people with different skin colors. It means that productivity and wages are once again aligned.

Low-wage workers, with a strong and diverse coalition firmly behind them, are finally saying enough is enough.

When Xochitl began working at the deli eight years ago, a minimum wage of $15 per hour seemed an impossible dream. Now, 100,000 Seattle workers like Xochitl, will watch as their paychecks increase, and their rent, car payments, and childcare costs become a little easier to shoulder. When we come together as we have in Seattle, we have the power to expand what people believe is possible.

I have lived in Oliver for the entire 31 years of my life.  In the last two years, I have buried more than nine friends and family members—six of them because of gun violence. You can’t tell a grown man not to sell drugs if you don’t have anything else to offer him. I got into trouble early in my life, and I was locked up for drugs. When I got out and got my second chance, I chose a different path. But my friends lived a certain lifestyle—a street life. Where we live, without a job, in order to eat you have to live a street life. This is the reality and you can’t escape it.

After my best friend, Yarndragus, was shot in the middle of the street in broad daylight, I knew I had to make a change.

If those six friends could’ve found good jobs, they would still be alive today. That is why I believe we have to get Baltimore and Maryland working.  I have been working with TRF and BUILD for the last two years, and I am grateful.  I have seen firsthand how change starts—with meaningful work for the residents of the neighborhoods.

Now, I work with young people who want to work. I take them to job fairs and to apply wherever I see companies hiring—from the new hotels being built down downtown to restaurants to construction sites throughout the city. It’s easy to get 50 young men and women to come with me to apply, but you can see the frustration in their faces when no one in the group gets hired. Our young people want to work, but there’s nowhere for them to go to find a job.

The jobs that TRF and BUILD have created have rebuilt my mixed-income community. The neighborhood I live, work and volunteer in—once drug-stricken—is now vibrant with life, joy and excitement. This past year, I and three co-workers enrolled in school paid for by TRF and BUILD. I passed a real estate class and my co-workers passed an electrician class.  I am now an assistant property manager.  I also bought my first car this year. I am excited for this job, but I could have also been depressed.

If I didn’t get this job, I would have had to go to a job hub day after day to fill out application after application. I would have had to choose whether or not to go back to school and rack up loan debt with no guarantee of a job on the other end. If I didn’t have a job, I might be out on the streets or in jail or forced to sell drugs. So, I’m standing up for myself and for the young people in my community who want to work. I’m standing with TRF and BUILD who are putting people to work, and I hope our elected officials will stand with us too.

So as the song says: “Ain’t no stopping us now: we’re on the move!”

To succeed, this is what we need: Any shovels going into the ground in Maryland over the next 10 years need to be held by Baltimoreans and Marylanders.  Baltimore approved $1 billion in school construction funding, and hundreds of millions of dollars are going into infrastructure improvements in the area. We are asking our elected leaders to invest in residents who want to work, and we are working to get voters to the polls to make sure our leaders know they are accountable to residents.

At Mercy Education Project for women and girls, Sharon talked to me about her secret: she had never told her husband or three daughters that she never graduated from high school. She fought through mental illness and worked hard to keep her family together, but she could not compete in an economy without a GED.

Sharon had a nightshift job, but could not advance unless she had a graduation certificate. It was her reading that was tripping her up. She had a learning disability and never learned how to compensate for it. As a result, she had come to dread school and the failure she associated with it.

Because of the needs of her family, Sharon came to Mercy Education and discovered that she was very capable. She entered Mercy’s welcoming community, improved her reading and math skills, and earned her GED.

The next day Sharon went to her employer with her diploma in hand and he said, “Today is your lucky day!” Just that morning, a worker had left so there was an opening on the day shift. Sharon moved into that new position with increased pay. All of her hard work was beneficial for herself, her family and her employer.

On the other side of Detroit I met Kristine, whose flashing eyes and ready smile are a magnetic attraction for anyone who walks within ten feet of her. She wrestled with dyslexia all of her life.  Although her mom was a champion for her needs, it wasn’t until she was an adult and went to the Dominican Literacy Center that she received the individualized attention that she needed. At the Center, she learned how to compensate for her disability.

With her new skills and engaging personality Kristine became a part-time mentor at the Center. This eventually led to a full-time position. She is now truly at the heart of the mentoring program, encouraging and supporting other adults as they strive to gain essential skills.

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Marcella, for example, came for tutoring and said she didn’t talk to anyone until Kristine talked with her. Then she began to share her story and her struggles with reading and math. The tutoring made all of the difference for Marcella as she gained confidence in her skills. She became a mentor to adults who were new to the Center. Marcella is now proficient with computers, has enrolled in a QuickBooks programing project, and continues to serve as an individual mentor. She delights that she is now “giving back” to others.

Another woman at the Dominican Center, Elizabeth, also said that Kristine helped her as she struggled to stay off drugs and learn to read. Kristine encouraged her to create a flyer for a cleaning business that Elizabeth wanted to start. Because of that flyer, Elizabeth is now employed and celebrating her steps into the labor force. Elizabeth and her employer take pride in Elizabeth’s personal growth and the contribution she is making to the business with her improved reading and math skills.

Finally, Antonio told me that Kristine was the person who encouraged him to first come to the Center. He had always been a good kid in school, but was extremely shy and afraid to speak up when he didn’t understand what was going on, and he could not read. He got passed along from grade to grade but had severe dyslexia. Although he received his high school diploma he had been afraid to tell anyone about his struggles. Because of Dominican, Antonio now spoke to me with confidence about how much he had learned and where he was headed.

The Mercy Education Program and Dominican Center—both started and sponsored by Catholic Sisters—are geared to addressing income disparities in our nation. Through individual tutoring and small classes they are making a difference as adults wrestle with lifelong limitations. But what is often missed is that they both use some government funding to pay for their programs. They combine government money with donations, grants and volunteers—a public-private partnership that is making change happen. But it is only one step in many that are necessary to change the face of poverty in our society.

We need more centers, not fewer. We need more employment, not less. We need better wages so that work does pay. We need to restructure some of our educational programs so that students do not get lost or discouraged. All of the people I met in Detroit were invested in making a difference in their city. They were not seeking a “welfare state” – they were looking for a “just state,” and they are well on their way to making something new in their city.

Pope Francis is right. We are all needed to further the quest for the common good. That is what is happening in parts of Detroit. May it be realized in our entire nation.