US House Rep.Pressley has authored a Resolution for a Federal Job Guarantee.
JOB GUARANTEE RESOLUTION
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Federal Job Guarantee.
---The Historical Struggle for a Job Guarantee---
(1) Whereas Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that “everyone has
the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to
protection against unemployment;”
(2) Whereas a Job Guarantee was a central demand and unfinished legacy of the Civil Rights
Movement, such that:
(A) At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined A.
Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin in demanding a job guarantee;
(B) In the subsequent decade, Coretta Scott King led a grassroots movement to enact a job
guarantee;
(C) These leaders all built on and advanced the work of earlier pioneers like Sadie Alexander, the
nation’s first Black economist, who advocated a job guarantee to address racial discrimination
against Black workers, while improving labor market conditions for all workers in the 1940s;
and
(D)Throughout the past one-hundred years, activists and intellectuals like Ella Baker and the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party have all seen a federal job guarantee as a key element of
racial justice;
(3) Whereas the right to a “useful and remunerative” job was the first and most fundamental right in
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights and is a core plank of the Green
New Deal Movement and the People’s Justice Guarantee;
(4) Whereas a Job Guarantee is essential to any effort to close the racial and gender income and wealth
gap;
(5) Whereas the United States has, on multiple occasions, including 1945-46 and 1977, and more
recently introduced legislation in an attempt to establish a full employment economy;
(6) Whereas the commitment to full employment has been embraced by Congress and is part of the
statutory mandate of the Federal Reserve System;
---Historical Economic Trends Necessitating a Job Guarantee---
(7) Whereas the United States has experienced decades of increasing inequality, racial economic
exclusion and inequity, stagnant wages, declining union membership, and deteriorating workplace
protections and conditions;
(8) Whereas the United States has experienced decades of chronic under-investment in its communities,
workforce, infrastructure, public services, agricultural and industrial heartland, and natural
environment;
(9) Whereas the United States has, for decades, perpetuated a punitive, racist, ineffective criminal legal
system that has systematically excluded millions of individuals from the workforce, failed to
effectively promote reentry for previously incarcerated individuals, and forced incarcerated individuals
to work in oppressive and exploitative conditions for effectively no pay;
---Current Systemic Problems---
(9) Whereas the United States is experiencing a long-term economic crisis in which many workers are
overworked, underpaid, and experience job and economic insecurity, with at least 100 million
Americans living in or near poverty, and 28 percent of full-time workers earning less than $15/hour
according to the National Equity Atlas;
(10) Whereas the United States is facing a weak economy and sluggish facing a grossly unequal
recovery in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis that has benefited few at the expense of many;
(11) Whereas the United States presently fails to recognize, support, or adequately remunerate the
household and care work of millions of women, parents, and familial caregivers;
(12) Whereas economic prosperity in the United States has been highly unequal since its founding,
largely falling on racial lines, with black and indigenous Americans consistently earning less, owning
less, and experiencing greater rates of economic precarity and poverty than white Americans;
(12) Whereas the United States has not increased the minimum wage for years, and maintains sub-
minimum wage carve-outs for incarcerated people, people with disabilities, and tipped workers;
(13) Whereas the United States presently exploits millions of undocumented workers, by forcing them
to work in substandard conditions and below prevailing wages
(14) Whereas the United States is presently experiencing a generational crisis, as millions of younger
and older workers face structural barriers to meaningful participation in the workforce;
(15) Whereas the United States is under-investing in creative, cultural, scientific and knowledge
industries, including higher education, libraries, public art, and journalism;
---Unfolding Problems---
(15) Whereas the United States is facing four overlapping and compounding crises - the COVID-19
pandemic, climate change, systemic racism, and extreme economic inequality - that together require a
large-scale mobilization on the scale of World War II to address;
(16) Whereas the United States is experiencing a sustained economic depression, in which low-wage
workers, Black, Latinx, Native American, and other communities of color, as well as women, have
suffered disproportionate employment and income losses and face mounting debts.
(17) Whereas the United States is facing growing demand for care work and social services as the Baby
Boomer generation retires from the workforce and the senior population is expected to nearly double
between 2018 and 2060;
(18) Whereas the United States is facing new workforce challenges relating to privacy, worker
autonomy, data-gathering and surveillance, and automation, as a result of new technologies and the
rapidly changing nature of industry, and which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic;
---The Harms of Unemployment---
(19) Whereas the United States currently suffers from high levels of underemployment, persistent
joblessness among marginalized populations and the growth of primarily low-quality/level jobs,
resulting in:
(A) the loss of millions of hours of potential output, as well as deterioration of skills and
productive capacity;
(B) lower community living standards, increased levels of working poverty and homelessness,
and higher rates of individual and family suffering, including physical and mental health
problems;
(C) higher rates of workplace discrimination, harassment, and a “last hired, first fired” approach
that disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, including Black workers, women,
LGTBQIA workers, workers with disabilities, formerly incarcerated workers, and young and
elderly workers;
(D) an effective minimum wage of zero for those who cannot obtain employment;
(E) an increasing fraction of the workforce forced to undertake multiple jobs, or engage in
dangerous work with insufficient labor protections;
---Federal Fiscal Authorities As Uniquely Positioned to Guarantee Jobs---
(19) Whereas reliance on private investment alone has never historically succeeded in establishing a
true full employment economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake paid work can do so;
(20) Whereas reliance on education, skill development, job training, and other “indirect” policies alone
have never historically succeeded in establishing a true full employment economy, in which every
individual wishing to undertake paid work can do so;
(21) Whereas untargeted, demand-increasing stimulus alone has never historically succeeded in
establishing a true full employment economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake paid
work can do so;
(22) Whereas the Federal Government has the unique legal and financial capacity, relative to the local
and state governments and the private sector, to credibly commit to funding the programs and
institutions necessary to establish a true full employment economy, in which every individual wishing
to undertake paid work can do so;
(23) Whereas the Federal Reserve, on its own, has never historically succeeded in establishing a true
full employment economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake paid work can do so, and by
its own admission, lacks the necessary tools and capacity to do so;
(24) Whereas Congress and the Treasury have a demonstrated track record of successfully funding and
administering direct job creation programs, including the Works Progress Administration and Civilian
Conservation Corps during the New Deal, which created over six million jobs in less than a year;
(25) Whereas Congress and the Treasury have a demonstrated track record of mass-scale mobilization
of the economy, including during World War II, when the United States maintained an average
unemployment rate of under two percent, and successfully doubled real output of the entire economy in
under six years in the face of an unprecedented existential threat;
Resolved, that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that –
(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Federal Job Guarantee —
(A) to finally eliminate the moral and economic scourge of involuntary unemployment;
(B) to establish a true full employment society, in which anyone who wants to undertake paid work in
the service of the community and/or the environment has ample opportunities to do so;
(C) to collectively achieve the greatest possible level of socially and ecologically sustainable
prosperity, and share the fruits of that prosperity equitably among all people;
(D) to empower the working class by offering every worker, regardless of their background, capacity,
or status, the opportunity to earn a fair, living wage, and to organize with fellow workers to advocate
for common interests;
(E) to ensure every person in America has genuine and meaningful opportunities for education,
training, career advancement, and choice with respect to workforce participation;
(F) to update and expand our understanding of socially necessary and/or useful work to include
historically under-recognized and uncompensated labor, including domestic and social care, ecological
preservation, and cultural, scientific, and creative work;
(G) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic
oppression and discrimination of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities,
deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women,
the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline
and vulnerable communities”);
(H) to complete the unfinished legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Deal, and meet the
contemporary environmental challenges identified in the Green New Deal Resolution;
(I) to meet the broader social and economic challenges of the 21st Century through appropriate public
investment, socially coordinated planning, and industrial cooperation;
(2) The goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (I) of paragraph (1) (the “Job Guarantee goals”)
should be accomplished through an immediate national mobilization:
(A) to establish and honor a legally enforceable right to fair, dignified, and decently remunerated
employment for all eligible individuals living in the United States (hereafter “Right to Employment”);
(B) to establish and honor a Bill of Worker’s Rights, as a complement to the Right to Employment, that
addresses issues related to worker exploitation, discrimination, harassment, compensation, privacy,
autonomy, choice of employment, working conditions, the right to organize and collectively bargain,
suitable accommodation for people with disabilities, protection and expansion of existing safety net
programs, and other related concerns (hereafter “Worker Bill of Rights”);
(C) to establish, implement, and administer a comprehensive and diverse range of socially necessary
and/or useful public projects, reflective of community and regional needs, including direct public job-
creation programs, and to support related education, training, credentialing, and career development
programs, to ensure workers enjoy meaningful choice and appropriate opportunities for growth and
advancement in their chosen area of employment (hereafter “Enabling Programs”);
(D) to design and implement the Right to Employment, Worker Bill of Rights, and Enabling Programs
through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and
vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, state and local
governments, academia, and businesses;
(E) to take ecological and equitable concerns into consideration when designing and implementing the
Right to Employment, Worker Bill of Rights, and Enabling Programs, as well as any other related
infrastructural and administrative institutions and procedures;
(F) to take any and all necessary steps to ensure, wherever possible, that all benefit from the collective
prosperity resulting from the establishment of the Right to Employment, Worker Bill of Rights, and
Enabling Programs
(G) to adequately and appropriately fund these efforts on a permanent, non-discretionary basis, using
Congress's power of the purse, through a combination of federal support to local and state
governments, and various direct federal grant and investment programs;
(3) The national mobilization towards a Federal Job Guarantee would include projects that:
(A) strengthen communities, retool our economy, achieve inclusive prosperity, and leave no one
behind;
(B) address national priorities as well as those put forward by local governments and community
organizations – with the participation of communities impacted by structural racism, oppression, and
disinvestment in the selection of projects;
(C) create net new jobs, without displacing existing public sector workers; and
(D) prioritize racial equity and environmental sustainability.
(4) Job Guarantee workers would be employed in a range of ways, including but not limited to:
(A) Ensuring the delivery of high-quality, professional care to children, seniors, and others in need of
long-term support in family based, informal, and formal settings;
(B) Augmenting the staffing of public education and early childhood learning, including Head Start and
preschool;
(C) Strengthening public afterschool programs, libraries, and recreational programs to provide lifelong
learning and enrichment for people of all ages;
(D) Implementing community infrastructure and improvement projects that revitalize neighborhoods,
including
(i) Vacant and abandoned property cleanup; street and sidewalk repair; remodeling and
modernization of schools and other public community-serving facilities; and maintenance and
renovation of parks, playgrounds, and public spaces;
(E) Expanding emergency preparedness, and relief and recovery from natural and community disasters,
including public health, natural disasters, and environmental emergencies
(F) Producing works of public art and documentation of American history akin to the WPA’s Federal
Arts Project;
(G) Implementing environmental conservation, remediation, and sustainability initiatives and
increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and our housing stock to address climate change;
(H) Rehabilitating and retrofitting our existing affordable housing stock to ensure safe, affordable,
quality homes, and supporting the development of new affordable housing and social housing to
address the nation’s housing crisis;
(I) Producing creative, scientific, artistic, or cultural works, which would then be made open and
available for public use; and
(J) Other projects that address public needs and can be implemented quickly.
(5) Job Guarantee jobs would pay no less than $15 per hour, adjusted on a regular basis to ensure a
rising standard of living, and would not replace any existing safety net programs or benefits, including
unemployment insurance.
(6) Job Guarantee jobs would also offer benefits including:
(A) health insurance consistent with that provided to existing federal government employees;
(B) paid sick days and family leave;
(C) retirement benefits; and
(D) paid vacation.
(7) Job Guarantee workers would:
(A) be able to join public sector unions and bargain collectively for better working conditions and
compensation; and
(B) be protected against discrimination and harassment by federal labor laws;
(C) have their data protected and their privacy respected; and
(D) be empowered to develop lasting skills through on-the-job training, as well as paid apprenticeships,
credentialing, and other career-building opportunities.
(8) Job Guarantee work would:
(A) Be made available -
(i) On a full-time basis for adult residents age 18 and over, including those with involvement in
the criminal legal system; and
(ii) On a part-time basis for young people ages 16 and 17,
(iii) For short or long-term periods, depending on worker needs; and
(iv) To all people on a non-discriminatory basis, including people with disabilities;
(B) Include outreach and recruitment, conducted in multiple languages;
(C) provide workers and aspiring workers with support services, such as childcare and transportation
assistance, and specific accommodations, as needed to access jobs and fulfill job responsibilities; and
(D) Meaningfully expand our social safety net and would not replace any existing safety net programs
or benefits, including unemployment insurance.
(9) The Job Guarantee program would be administered by the Department of Labor and overseen by
the Secretary of Labor in coordination with the Treasury Secretary, who would be responsible for
dispersing funding. In particular:
(A) The Secretary of Labor would direct Treasury funds to local Employment Offices to manage job
guarantee projects and match job seekers to projects, as well as cover any related capital and
administrative costs, with funds targeted during the initial three-year start-up period to areas of greatest
employment need; and
(B) State, county, and local governments, as well as Tribal Nations, would help administer the
program, engaging residents in community assessments and participatory processes to identify job
guarantee projects to go into a Community Job Bank.