Column: Workplace issues rise in 2016

The signs were eye-catching, even amid the colorful chaos at the Register’s Iowa State Fair Soapbox:  “The 1950s called. They want their workplace policies back.”

Most of the staff and volunteers behind those messages didn’t look like they’d experienced workplace policies in the 1990s, let alone the 1950s.  About a dozen of them gathered recently for an organizer training session with two co-founders and national leaders of a new issue advocacy group, the Make It Work Campaign.

On the walls were handwritten posters with personal stories like this one: “How I make it work: Being homeless, I worked hard at my job to work up the ladder but got no raise despite being promoted four times. I’ve since left and found another job but I worry this will happen again. We need to make sure successful businesses are held accountable to their workers so they can make it work. — Toni, Des Moines.”

Although the organization’s graphics have a retro look, the Make It Work Organization is new to Iowa for the 2016 caucus campaign.  It was founded a little over a year ago by a group of women, including veteran issue organizers Vivien Labaton and Tracy Sturdivant.

“Increasingly, families are walking a tightrope of just how to balance making enough to afford child care, finding a job that offers paid sick days or paid family leave," Labaton said. “And taken together, they’ve created a sort of perfect storm for families.”

The Make It Work campaign, like many others in Iowa, is trying to get presidential candidates’ attention and pin them down on issues.  This group advocates equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage to at least $12 per hour, access to quality and affordable care for children and seniors, and paid sick leave and family and medical leave for workers.

Sturdivant said while polls show widespread, bipartisan support from Americans around these issues, people need to hear that others are struggling like they are.  “What doesn’t exist is people understanding they can actually demand for it.  You suffer in silence around these issues and you don’t understand that there is a role that government can play in actually helping to provide some relief,” she said.

There is a partisan divide from presidential candidates on questions such as raising the minimum wage or ensuring all workers have paid sick days.  Issues like equal pay for equal work, raising the minimum wage and affordable early-childhood education are staples of Democrats’ stump speeches. Republicans are more likely to say there’s no role for government in issues like paid sick leave or family and medical leave, or that such questions should be left to the states.   California, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington have passed family and medical leave acts.

The examples from corporate America are mixed. Netflix, the online movie streaming company, this year announced an unlimited first-year leave policy for new parents.  Amazon, an online retailer, has been in the news for a brutal corporate culture that some workers say demands round-the-clock availability and shows little tolerance for illness or family demands.

Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, the key question that candidates need to answer about workplace policies is who’s going to pay for it.  If they want a government mandate such as raising the minimum wage, who will foot the bill? Businesses? Their customers?  Or will it fall to taxpayers, if businesses can’t afford to comply and send jobs overseas?

If candidates want to do away with mandates for businesses, who will pay when full-time workers can’t make enough to get out of poverty, can’t afford quality child care or have to work when they’re sick? Is it fair to have taxpayers subsidize welfare programs for the employees of multibillion-dollar corporations?

In Iowa, where the unemployment rate is below 4 percent, the question is not necessarily about creating more jobs but how to make work pay for those who are already employed.  The Make It Work campaign may be asking voters to hark back to the workplaces of the 1950s, but the issues it raises are central to the economic concerns of today.