Without clear and specific action, all the steps to “Build back better” that federal and local governments are taking to recover from the pandemic could still leave millions of people behind.

The Better for All campaign is driven by a national coalition of labor unions and community organizations to ensure the Biden-Harris Administration succeeds in improving the lives of all working people, especially the most vulnerable workers among us. 

To Build Back Better for All, the Biden-Harris administration has the ability to: 

1. Ensure equitable access to job training and job placement for Black workers, women, and other groups facing discrimination from employers.  Update Executive Order 11246 – Equal Employment Opportunity.

In 2014, President Obama amended the order to prohibit federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  But the data that 11246 is based on dates all the way back to 1965. By simply updating the data the equal employment opportunity order is based on to modern times, the Biden-Harris Administration would expand access to Black workers and other workers facing employment discrimination and ensure that any infrastructure legislative package that comes out of Congress gives employment opportunities to the communities that have been systematically denied access to good jobs due to systemic racism. 

2. Create an affirmative process to protect immigrant workers at risk of deportation for speaking out in the workplace.

Workers’ ability to speak out on the job when things are unsafe or employers’ policies are in violation of their rights is a central pillar of making sure every workplace is a good workplace. But the lack of protections for immigrant workers and ICE’s emboldened deportation process under the Trump administration has left immigrant workers involved in labor disputes at risk of unscrupulous employers using the threat of deportation as retaliation to keep them silent. An affirmative process would prevent the deportation of immigrants involved in labor disputes and stop employers from sending ICE after people in retaliation for demanding better working conditions.

All of us together are making sure that when we build back, we build back better for all of us.