LABOR & ECONOMIC JUSTICE

• Require a $15 federal minimum wage that rises with inflation.

• Protect retirement rights for current and future beneficiaries in the Arizona State Retirement

System and maintain the Arizona State Retirement System’s defined benefit system. Secure

these rights for all employees.

• Ensure 12 weeks of annual paid medical or family leave for all public and private employees.

• Retrain fossil-fuel industry workers to help grow our clean energy industry.

• Prevent discrimination in pay and work conditions based on race, ethnicity, age, gender

identity and sexual orientation.

• Strengthen labor laws to protect older workers from forced retirement.

• Provide regulated, subsidized childcare.

• End privatization of government services.

• Regulate banking and lending policies, including redlining and covenants.

• Strengthen consumer finance protections.

• End predatory short-term lending.

• Reform arbitration laws and eliminate mandatory arbitration in consumer and employment

matters.

• Tax progressively, based on ability to pay. Close loopholes. Impose a wealth tax.

• End corporate tax giveaways where there is no tangible or documented financial return on

the public’s investment.

• Protect and strengthen Social Security benefits.

• Expand nonprofit financial institutions and establish public banks.

• Address the true cost of the damage done to indigenous nations and peoples and the

descendants of enslaved people. Remediate that damage through reparations, policy reform

and affirmative action.

Economic Development

Arizona must continue to diversify its economy by targeting such cutting-edge sectors as bioscience and advanced electronics, while also protecting and expanding such traditionally strong sectors as aerospace and aviation (notably the highly promising area of unmanned aircraft systems). Southern Arizona must also continue to focus economic development efforts on retail, ranching, farming, produce, renewable energy, agribusiness, tourism/ hospitality, biomedical, create small business incubators, and education.

Arizona must develop a culture of collaboration to provide the infrastructure and planning that rural Arizona requires.

WHY-

Understaffing and the lack of economic development plans in many communities in LD21 are making it difficult for these towns and cities to achieve sustained economic development over the long term.