Policy: Work and the Workplace

(again from candidates' own websites)
Obama:

• cosponsored and is strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan effort to assure that workers can exercise their right to organize.
  
• cosponsor of legislation to overturn the NLRB's "Kentucky River" decisions classifying hundreds of thousands of nurses, construction, and professional workers as "supervisors" who are not protected by federal labor laws.
• ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods.
• raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.

McCain:

• is calling for National Commission on Workplace Flexibility and Choice to bring together a bi-partisan set of leaders representing workers, small and large employers, labor, and academics. The Commission would make recommendations to the President on how modernizing our nation's labor laws and training programs can help workers better balance the demands of their job with family life and to enable workers to more easily transition between jobs.

  The Commission would examine the following issues that McCain believes are important to workplace flexibility and choice:

• Modernizing the nation's labor laws so that they allow for more flexible scheduling arrangements
  
• Ensuring that the nation's labor laws don't get in the way of working at home
  
• Promoting telework so that workers can spend less time commuting
  
• Making health more portable so that workers don't lose their benefits when they switch jobs
  
• Ensuring that workers can choose retirement plans that best suit their needs
  
• Providing workers with more choice in job training assistance so that they can build the skills they need for new and better jobs