Contract for Maine's Working Class Featured in Semafor Article
The news outlet Semafor featured the Maine AFL-CIO in a story about our Contract for Maine's Working-Class, a platform developed for workers and by workers for the next state Legislature. As Semafor notes, the idea for this contract was developed based on the paradox that while union membership has rapidly declined over the past several decades, support for union is at a record high and nearly half of Americans want unions to have more influence. From the article:
In a moment of declining trust in Congress, political parties, the media and many other institutions, labor activists believe a union-led movement whose stated aim is to agitate for the benefit of all workers could have real juice in setting a new national agenda as audacious as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” which helped produce a sweeping congressional majority for Republicans that year.
“Both political parties are wildly unpopular. Unions are more popular than ever,” said Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO. “It is really important that we — working people, the labor movement — define and put out an agenda and demand it. Or somebody else will define it for us, and it’ll be culture wars, or it’ll be some mealy-mouth opportunity agenda.”
The main tenets of the “Contract with Working Americans” were born out of a series of canvassing surveys led by state AFL-CIOs and affiliates. But there is no single document; iterations of it vary somewhat from state to state, to account for local trades and industries.
The “contract” framework was inspired by negotiated union contracts and is meant to establish policy commitments from candidates in exchange for the movement’s support. All versions include a set of economic priorities: Signatories must support lowering prescription drug costs by expanding the government’s power to negotiate directly with companies, expanding healthcare coverage, capping childcare costs, bringing down the price of gas, and raising the minimum wage.