Since the econ­o­my no longer offers enough in wages to sup­port a life worth liv­ing, we demand the insti­tu­tion and expan­sion of a social wage to fill in the gap, and ensure that we can live a decent life in the midst of unsteady employ­ment.   We want a guar­an­teed basic income, and reject the stig­ma of such income being a kind of ‘char­i­ty’, but con­sid­er it a basic right of all human beings and a nor­mal con­di­tion of life in an advanced civ­i­liza­tion capa­ble of pro­duc­ing abun­dance.

Hous­ing is the biggest expense for most pre­car­i­ous work­ers today,  and the dan­ger of los­ing it the great­est threat to our free­dom and well-being.  The prospect of home­less­ness forces many us to accept dead-end jobs and abu­sive rela­tion­ships, instead of find­ing sit­u­a­tions that allow us to grow and thrive.  All human beings deserve a roof over their heads.  If the hous­ing mar­ket can’t pro­vide it, we demand that soci­ety step in and ensure that there is enough hous­ing for all.  We fur­ther demand that our social hous­ing shall not be ‘projects’ con­trolled by wel­fare bureau­crats, but real com­mu­ni­ties man­aged by pre­car­i­ous work­ers our­selves.

All human beings need ade­quate food, health­care, edu­ca­tion, child­care and trans­porta­tion to pros­per in an advanced civ­i­lized soci­ety.  Instead, pre­car­i­ous work­ers find our­selves in a state of the most bar­bar­ic depri­va­tion, an arti­fi­cial scarci­ty in the midst of unprece­dent­ed plen­ty, a need­less hus­tle to secure basic neces­si­ties.  Worse, as a con­di­tion for our access to the basic neces­si­ties of life we are often expect­ed to enter into ter­ri­ble debt, ensur­ing our servi­tude to the finan­cial elite for the rest of our lives.  To free our­selves from this humil­i­at­ing and slav­ish con­di­tion, we are call­ing on soci­ety to ful­fill its duty to guar­an­tee the pro­vi­sion of food, health­care, edu­ca­tion, child­care and trans­porta­tion for all.

Pre­car­i­ous work­ers have no desire to veg­e­tate on pub­lic sup­port, nor emu­late the shame­less lifestyles of the idle rich.  We seek active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­duc­tive econ­o­my, but are locked out every­where.  Where pro­duc­tion by pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions is not suf­fi­cient to keep give work to all those who need it, we demand a a robust pro­gram of pub­lic works.  We want green jobs to do what the bil­lion­aires won’t: clean up the mess they have made of the plan­et.  Where pri­vate own­er­ship fails to pro­vide for us, we seek to build up the coop­er­a­tive econ­o­my that will allow us to man­age our own pro­duc­tive work and pro­vide for our own com­mu­ni­ties.

Since the offi­cial econ­o­my fails to keep us ful­ly employed, it is nec­es­sary to spread the exist­ing work hours out among all work­ers seek­ing employ­ment.  There­fore, just as pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions fought for—and won—the 40-hour work­week, pre­car­i­ous work­ers demand the 24-hour work­week.  And instead of being forced to sac­ri­fice our entire per­son­al and fam­i­ly lives just to obtain a few hours of work, we demand con­trol of sched­ul­ing, with the goal of mak­ing employ­ment flex­i­ble—for the work­er.  We want our lives back!

In addi­tion to the basic social wage, which we believe is the right of every mem­ber of a civ­i­lized soci­ety, the min­i­mum wages of remu­ner­a­tive employ­ment must be kept high enough that it is worth­while to work in the first place.  Every­one has a right to earn enough to raise a fam­i­ly and pro­vide a bright future for all of its mem­bers.  The min­i­mum wage must be indexed to the cost of liv­ing, to pre­vent infla­tion from always forc­ing real wages down below their val­ue.

As the con­di­tions for the good life become increas­ing­ly unat­tain­able, peo­ple thrust into irre­deemable pover­ty often resort to drugs, pros­ti­tu­tion, and crime. How is the prob­lem cur­rent­ly solved?  Instead of jobs, hous­ing and social ser­vices, we are dealt bru­tal­i­ty and impris­on­ment.  A dis­grace­ful prison indus­try has grown to shock­ing pro­por­tions to ware­house the sur­plus pop­u­la­tion, prof­it­ing from human bondage.  Besides this, the tech indus­try is deploy­ing bil­lions to turn dai­ly life on the out­side into a prison of elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance.  We say enough is enough!

If you have con­tributed your labor to the cre­ation of the wealth of soci­ety, you have a right to share in that wealth, as well as the right to a vote and a voice in the gov­ern­ment of that soci­ety.  Depriv­ing a sec­tion of work­ers of basic civ­il rights endan­gers the rights and well-being of all work­ers.

For decades work­ers of low- and mid­dle-income have been bled dry. Mean­while pub­lic funds have been increas­ing­ly fun­neled into accounts of the cor­po­ra­tions, banks and bil­lion­aires. Tax rates have been tip­ping away from the top and toward the bot­tom. Income inequal­i­ty is already bad enough before adding in this tax swin­dle! There­fore we demand pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion to fight every attempt of the rich to dodge pay­ing their share and push the tax bur­den onto work­ers and the poor.

With our fate scat­tered to the winds of the glob­al­ized econ­o­my, pre­car­i­ous work­ers have no endur­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion. So we form our own post-indus­tri­al unions in order to estab­lish our own voice and and our own pow­er, to put for­ward our own demands direct­ly to those in pow­er. Even though most pre­car­i­ous work­ers will prob­a­bly nev­er belong to one, we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the demands of labor unions, for we under­stand that their strug­gle is our own. Through our orga­nized pow­er we fight for rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our inter­ests in polit­i­cal par­ties along­side the inter­ests of the secure­ly employed. We sup­port new inde­pen­dent par­ties that direct­ly rep­re­sent these com­bined inter­ests, even as we fight to tip the bal­ance inside of old tra­di­tion­al par­ties in favor of these inter­ests.