Quality Jobs Proposals
For a job to enable economic mobility, it must provide sufficient, stable income, and supports for advancement. While we have a range of views on the definition of “quality work,” we agree on several elements that are essential for work to provide the basis for upward mobility:
- Income that is sufficient to meet costs of living, and is steady and predictable enough to provide financial stability.
- A combination of work supports, benefits, and policies that enable full participation and contribution on the job, and enable workers to meet their responsibilities to family and community outside of work.
- Non-discrimination, inclusion and meaningful opportunities for worker input in the workplace.
- Access to capability- and skill-building opportunities that lead to higher wages.
- Removal of barriers to entry and reentry to the workforce.
Business, government and workers have mutual, ongoing obligations to create quality work for all participants in the workforce. Improving work quality requires action not only in the work place, but also in the community. Adequate, affordable health care, child care, transportation and housing are important complements to adequate incomes and work-based benefits and skills. They also remove barriers to work. Therefore, solutions to quality work challenges will require significant and coordinated action by private and public actors. We acknowledge that it was beyond our scope and expertise to fully address all of these important complements to work-based income and skills, and we welcome the ongoing efforts of others to address these related challenges.
As a group, we have pushed well beyond the level of shared principles to seek agreement on ways to improve job quality. We have differing views on the right overall balance between government requirements and voluntary action by employers. Nonetheless, we have found common ground on several priorities that are essential for improving work quality. Specifically, we recommend that:
- Business leaders, workers and their representatives, and policy makers explore and adopt strategies to raise and supplement incomes for workers, considering the principles and options that we present in this document.
- Congress consider and pass legislation ensuring that workers have a reasonable amount of annual paid sick time/paid time off.
- Federal, state and local governments adopt policies and make investments to increase the availability of affordable, quality child care.
- Employers and workers collaborate to develop best practices in scheduling systems to provide predictability and flexibility for both parties, including clear, shared expectations on the number of hours to be worked in a given time period.
- Employers ensure that workers have a meaningful role in employers’ decisions that affect their working conditions, wages, hours, and opportunities for advancement.
- Employers and workers not only respect legal obligations, but also make and uphold commitments to ensure non-discrimination and freedom from harassment, and to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion in the work place.
Following are our views on each of these priorities.
We also note that our recommendations on quality work are complementary to our recommendations (elsewhere in this report) on expanding workforce pathways including removal of barriers to work and providing more tools and supports for financial stability. These ideas work in tandem to facilitate greater mobility, especially for low-income Americans.
Convergence Center for Policy Resolution is a national non-profit based in Washington, DC that convenes individuals and organizations with divergent views to build trust, identify solutions, and form alliances for action on issues of critical public concern. Reports and recommendations issued under our auspices reflect the views of the individuals and organizations who put the ideas forward. Convergence itself remains neutral and does not endorse or take positions on recommendations of its stakeholders.
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