Progressive Economic Narrative on Good Jobs and Workers' Rights PowerPoint by USAction Education Fund

1. Telling Our Story:
An Economy that
Works for All of Us
Prepared for the Progressive Economic
Narrative Group by USAction Education
Fund
Narrative Focus on Good Jobs
and Workers’ Rights

2. What is narrative?
 People can only marshal anger and action about the crisis
if they feel that at some basic level they understand it.
Before we have a politics, or a broad call for reform, we
must have some broadly shared understanding of what
went wrong and who’s responsible.(New Pecora
Commission, Christopher Hayes, New Deal 2.0)

3. What is narrative?
 The narrative determines our attitudes toward the actors
and events of the crisis. It also identifies the structural
problems thought suitable for legislative and regulatory
remedy. (Vincent Reinhart, American Enterprise Institute)

4. Five Pillars of our Narrative
 The Economic Problem
 What a Successful Economy Looks Like
 The Role of Our Government
 The Political Problem
 The Call to Action

5. Our Story
Connect with our Economic Problem
 Working and middle class families are struggling, while
the richest get richer at the expense of the rest of us.
 American families are working harder and getting paid
less, falling behind our parents' generation.
 Big corporations shipped jobs overseas and Wall Street
speculators took more and more of America’s wealth, getting
rich quickly at the expense of American workers, and
families.

6. Our Story: Good Jobs
 Working and middle class families are struggling, while the
richest get richer at the expense of the rest of us.
 Too many Americans can’t find good jobs and too many jobs
don’t pay enough to support a family.
 Millions of American workers are denied basic benefits like
sick days, are paid less than minimum wage or are not paid
for overtime.
 Employers want to call all the shots, even denying their
employees the freedom join together in a union and ask for
decent wages and benefits and better working conditions.

7. Our Story
What a Successful Economy Looks Like
 The middle class is the engine of the economy.
 The true measure of economic success is the well-being of
American families, and the productivity of our nation, not
just the stock market and corporate profits.
 We all do better when we all do better. America is only as
strong as its middle class.
 Our economic success is driven by innovating and investing
in the future so that every American has a good job, can
educate their kids, support their families and retire with
security.

8. Our Story: Good Jobs
 Working families and the middle class are the engines of
the economy.
 Workers who earn good pay and have decent benefits, who
can shop at local businesses and support and care for their
families, keep the economy moving forward.

9. Our Story
The Role of Our Government in the Economy
 The middle class does not prosper by accident.
 We build the middle class by decisions we make
together, as a society.
 Decisions to invest in our people, expand opportunity and
provide security.
 Decisions that will pave the way for businesses to innovate
and meet the future.
 Writing rules that boost businesses that do the right thing.

10. Our Story: Good Jobs
 The middle class does not prosper by accident. We build
the middle class by decisions we make together, as a
society.
 Decisions by our government to write rules so that businesses
will invest in the middle class by: creating good jobs here in
America; providing decent wages and benefits; arranging
work so that workers can do their jobs and care for their
families; protecting the freedom of workers to organize
together and form unions.

11. Our Story: Good Jobs
 The middle class does not prosper by accident. We build the
middle class by decisions we make together, as a society.
 Decisions by businesses to boost economic prosperity by:
 Providing decent wages and benefits, so that workers have
the purchasing power to drive the economy.
 Creating good jobs here in America and invest in our local
communities.
 Arranging work so that employees can get the job done and
care for their families.
 Respecting the right for workers to join together in a union
to stand for their common concerns.

12. Our Story
Our Political Problem –
 To build a strong middle class, we need our elected
representatives to work for all of us .
 The issue is not the size of our government, it's who it works
for – the richest few or all of us?
 Today, CEO campaign contributors and Wall Street
speculators bribe our leaders to rewrite the rules just for
them and to look the other way when they break the law.
 Our democracy will only work again when we all have an
equal voice in making the rules we all live by. We have to
take our democracy back to ensure that our economy works
for all of us, not just the richest few.

13. Our Story
The Call to Action –
 We are fighting together for an America that works for all
of us.
 It’s up to us to fight together for the American Dream:
opportunity for good jobs, strong communities, shared
prosperity.
 We are going to hold our elected representatives responsible
for protecting and expanding the middle class.
 Americans have done this before. This is who we are. This is
what America is all about.

14. Our Story: Good Jobs
 We are fighting together for an America that works for all
of us.
 Around the country, people are standing up to fight for the
freedom to stick together at work, to be treated with
dignity, to have our hard work rewarded with good pay and
benefits to support and care for our families.

15. www.progressivenarrative.org
 The website has lots of materials including:
 Full version of PEN on Good Jobs and Workers’ Rights (at the
issues tab).
 This training PowerPoint (at the training tab)
 PEN overall – including long and shorter versions.
 PEN training materials.
 PEN on other issues.
 We are the 99% version of PEN.

16. More materials to come
 By end of December we will have:
 A wall poster with key messages for PEN for Good Jobs and
Workers’ Rights.
 A pocket version of PEN for Good Jobs and Workers’ Rights.
 A training workbook for PEN for Good Jobs and Workers’
Rights.
You will be able to order quantities of these and also download
the workbook.

17. Your homework
 Pick an issue.
 Use the 5 PEN narrative pillars we just went over to talk
about the issue.
 Use each pillar.
 You can change the order, if that works for you (sometimes
people switch 1 and 2), but use all 5.
 Use your own words and a mix of words from the PEN.
 Send to me for feedback: rkirsch@rooseveltinstitute.org