One of the key platform planks of the Keady2020 congressional campaign in NJ04 is to fight for Workplace Democracy. Together with the trade union movement, Jim Keady will fight for living wages, collective bargaining rights, and rebuild America’s middle class.
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living..”
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt, Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (June 16, 1933)
Jim Keady has a history of doing labor rights work. He’s seen what a backward march on living wages and workplace democracy would look like. He’s seen the poverty, the slums, and the desperation.
This is where the market fundamentalists and 1% want to bring us. Our labor movement in the United States fought for decades to establish basic rights and fair wages for workers and these have been ferociously under attack ever since Reagan broke the air-traffic control workers union in the 80s. Jim Keady
This is why, along with the international labor rights work Keady has done, he is so deeply committed to domestic labor issues and the fight to ensure the rights of workers here in the United States.
As a Councilman in the City of Asbury Park (2005-2008), Jim was the only elected official demonstrating with the local building trade unions in the fight to solidify project labor agreements on the major construction projects in town.
Over the years, he has been on the line with teachers, electrical workers, teamsters, communications workers, laborers, etc. He has been endorsed in his political campaigns by the NJ AFL-CIO.
If elected to Congress, Jim Keady will fight for the working people of America:
- Doubling union membership within four years.
- Establishing federal protections against the firing of workers for any reason other than “just cause.”
- Providing unions the ability to organize through a majority sign up process and enact “first contract” provisions to ensure companies cannot prevent a union from forming by denying a first contract.
- Denying federal contracts to companies that pay poverty wages, outsource jobs overseas, engage in union busting, deny good benefits, and pay CEOs outrageous compensation packages
- Eliminating “Right to Work for Less” laws and guarantees the right to unionize for workers historically excluded from labor protections, like farm workers and domestic workers.
Fighting for and establishing labor rights protections like these are how Jim Keady plans to help rebuild America’s Middle Class.