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2016 presidential candidates on labor and employment

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2016 Presidential Election
Date: November 8, 2016
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Winner: Donald Trump (R)
Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates
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For information about labor and employment under the Trump administration, click here.

The overview of the issue below was current as of the 2016 election.
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, voters named the economy and jobs as the "most important" problems facing America.[1] Job growth remained a top priority for Americans even as the unemployment rate in the U.S. returned to pre-recession levels. In October 2009, after nearly 9 million jobs were eliminated and following a 44 percent decrease in job openings during the Great Recession, the rate of unemployment reached 10 percent. Starting in October 2015 and throughout the 2016 presidential campaign season, unemployment hovered close to 5 percent.[2][3]

In 2016, the presidential candidates focused less on the unemployment rate, and more on "bringing back" jobs that have been outsourced, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Hillary Clinton called for investment in American infrastructure as a means of creating "good-paying" jobs and increasing wages.[4] Donald Trump's economic plan called for trade, tax, energy, and regulatory reform to make America the "best place in the world to get a job."[5]

See what the 2016 candidates and their respective party platforms said about labor and employment below.

Interested in reading more about the 2016 candidates' stances on issues related to labor and employment? Ballotpedia also covered what the candidates said about federal assistance programs and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Democratic ticket

Democratic Party Hillary Clinton

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  • Hillary Clinton announced a plan to increase and expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as a form of tax relief on October 11, 2016. Under her proposal, the CTC would increase from $1,000 to $2,000 for each child four years of age or younger. She would also "lower the threshold for refundability from $3,000 to the first dollar of earnings for families."[6]
  • On September 30, 2016, Clinton announced a plan to create a new National Service Reserve to connect Americans interested in volunteering with communities in need. The initiative would allow local and state leaders to call on reservists to provide emergency relief, natural disaster assistance, and support for programs tackling community issues like homelessness and drug addiction. Participation in the program could lead to college credits and special credentials.[7]
  • Clinton wrote an op-ed in Fortune discussing the challenges working women and mothers face on September 29, 2016. "I’ll never forget what it was like to be a mom at work. It wasn’t easy. And I was lucky: I had financial security, a supportive employer, and affordable childcare. Too many families don’t. I’ve met so many parents stuck in impossible situations, at their wits’ ends trying to make it all work. It just shouldn’t be this hard to work and have a family," Clinton wrote. She then highlighted her plan to limit childcare expenses to 10 percent of a household’s income, establish 12 weeks of paid family leave, raise the minimum wage, encourage Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, and promote pay transparency.[8]
  • During a rally in Orlando, Florida, on September 21, 2016, Clinton discussed her vision for an “inclusive economy that welcomes people with disabilities.” Clinton made the following policy proposals to expand job opportunities for workers with disabilities: achieving a fair wage, increasing accessibility to higher education, launching a program called Autism Works to improve the success of workers with autism, and ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.[9]
  • Read more of Hillary Clinton's public statements on labor and employment.

Democratic Party Tim Kaine

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  • Politico reported in July 2016 that Tim Kaine had expressed strong support for Virginia's right-to-work law, which prohibits forced union membership and forced payment of membership dues as conditions of employment.[12]
  • Kaine received a lifetime AFL-CIO Senate voting record of 96 percent in 2014.[13]
  • In 2013, Kaine co-sponsored legislation to expand the number of H-1B visas granted each year to fill high-demand openings in the technology sector.[12]
  • To help strengthen the workforce by ensuring that students can acquire the technical skills they need to enjoy productive and successful careers after graduation, Kaine helped found the Senate Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus.[14]

Republican ticket

Republican Party Donald Trump

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  • On September 15, 2016, Trump revealed an economic plan which he said would create 25 million new jobs and grow the economy at an annual rate of at least 3.5 percent. Describing his plan in a speech before the Economic Club of New York as “the most pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-family plan put forth perhaps in the history of our country,” Trump said, “My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving and that our economy can never grow as it did once before.” The plan includes reductions in non-defense spending, lower taxes, penalties for companies that move overseas, fewer environmental regulations, and a renegotiation of NAFTA.[15]
  • On September 13, 2016, Trump called for six weeks of paid maternity leave. He said, “our plan offers a crucial safety net for working mothers whose employers do not provide paid maternity leave. This solution will receive strong bipartisan support … And we will be completely self-financing.” Trump campaign officials told The Washington Post that paid maternity leave would be paid for by “savings achieved by eliminating fraud in the unemployment insurance program.”[16]
  • On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump said that he “would like to raise it [the federal minimum wage] to at least $10.” Trump also said that “states should really call the shots” on setting a minimum wage. According to The Wall Street Journal, “In calling for a federal wage increase to $10, Mr. Trump is putting himself more in line with President Barack Obama and other Democrats, including his opponent, Hillary Clinton.”[17]
  • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on July 20, 2016, that Trump was considering requesting civil service laws be changed if he was elected president to make it easier to remove holdovers from the previous administration. “It’s called burrowing. You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House,” Christie said.[18]

Republican Party Mike Pence

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  • In 2011, Mike Pence voted for H.R.3094 - the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, which proposed amending "the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to revise requirements for determination by the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) of an appropriate bargaining unit before an election of collective bargaining representation."[20]
  • Pence voted against H.R.800 - the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, which proposed amending "the National Labor Relations Act to require the National Labor Relations Board to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees have authorized designation of the representative (card-check) and there is no other individual or labor organization currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit."[21]
  • Read more of Mike Pence's public statements on 2016 campaign issues.

Green ticket

Green Party Jill Stein

Jill-Stein-circle.png
  • In a February 8, 2016, interview with Robert Scheer, Stein said that her campaign is the only one that supports canceling student debt. According to Stein, this would address the needs of the 43 million young people and not-so-young people locked in student debt because the jobs available are "not sufficient to keep a roof over their head, let alone also pay back their debt."[22]
  • During a February 5, 2016, interview, Jill Stein said, "We call for emergency creation of 20 million living wage jobs that transition us to a green economy -- a green energy, food and transportation system -- and restoring critical infrastructure, including ecosystems."[23]
  • According to Stein's 2016 campaign website, she supported jobs as a right. If elected, Stein planned to create living-wage jobs for every American who needed work, replacing unemployment offices with employment offices. She also planned to advance workers' rights to unionize and to keep a fair share of the wealth they helped create.[24]
  • In a November 11, 2015, interview with Yes! Weekly, Jill Stein proposed a jobs program meant to create "a more just economy." She said, "These are jobs, which like the New Deal, they would revive the economy. In this case, it is a Green New Deal so these jobs would focus on creating 100-percent clean renewable energy by 2030, creating healthy local, sustainable food systems and creating public transportation at the same time that we meet human needs. It’s a massive jobs creation program, but it’s far more efficient than the jobs program that Obama created in 2009, which was extremely expensive because it wasn’t direct job creation. It had a lot of tax incentives built in and those can get used in a whole variety of ways. Maybe it created 1 or 2 million jobs and cost $800 billion dollars. A Green New Deal would cost less than that and create far more jobs because it creates jobs directly, provides direct incentives for those jobs that are created."[25]
  • Stein said in a November 11, 2015, interview with Yes! Weekly that her New Green deal "contains living wage jobs so it contains the work that has to be done to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. That would happen with 20 million jobs. When that happens, it would pose so much pressure to jobs that aren’t paying these wages, that it would really force them to do the same.[26]
  • Read more of Jill Stein's public statements on labor and employment.

Green Party Ajamu Baraka

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  • Baraka tweeted about employment and capitalism on October 6, 2016. He wrote, "Detroit, Flint, LA, etc. prove capitalism's failure to provide long-term quality employment for workers & black workers in particular."[28]
  • On October 6, 2016, Baraka tweeted, "The TPP will be an effective tool in the elite's struggle to crush movements for living wages. We have seen this with NAFTA."[29]
  • After the 2016 vice presidential debate on October 4, 2016, Baraka participated in Democracy Now!'s "Expanding the Debate" program and responded to the same questions that were posed to Tim Kaine and Mike Pence. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! asked Baraka to respond to U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), an "African-American, who spoke about being stopped by police numerous times." Baraka responded in part, "Well, one reason, we believe, is because what we have now is an aggression that is a reflection of the fact that our communities are seen as a surplus population, a surplus community, that right now, because black labor is no longer needed in this new economy, we find that we have become a social problem."[30]
  • During the vice presidential debate, Baraka expressed his views on employment on Twitter. He wrote, "Employment and other issues relevant to a sustainable economy cannot be separate from the issue of race and human rights."[31]
  • Also during the vice presidential debate on October 4, 2016, Baraka tweeted, "Jobs need to be a basic human right, in other words, the ability to earn a living should be fundamental for all."[32]
  • In his May 2015 essay, "The Political Economy of Black Opposition to Free-Trade Neoliberalism," Baraka discussed labor and employment. He wrote in part, "Today the labor participation rate for African American men is the lowest on record. The plight of African American women is ever more precarious, although their employment rate is a little better. However, African American women’s increased participation in the economy is offset by the fact that black women are disproportionately tasked with the responsibility of caring not only for themselves but their children. Linda Burnham points out an additional economic reality that black women face and that is because black women are overrepresented in the low-wage sector they suffer from both the gender and the racial gap in wages. Confined to unsteady and unpredictable low wage service sector jobs, it should not be surprising that the fastest growing population of homeless in the U.S. is African American women with children. Neoliberal globalization also had a devastating impact on working people in cities like Baltimore. The shattered communities and pockets of absolute poverty that exist in that city did not come about as a result of fathers not being in the home or black people not taking advantage of opportunities but is a direct result of the 100,000 unionized manufacturing and seaport-related jobs lost in Baltimore when those jobs were shifted out of the U.S. by corporate and finance capital. The closing of Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point Works that employed 35,000 people and the dramatic reduction of jobs at Baltimore’s port were body blows that the working class community of Baltimore never recovered from. The terrible reality facing increasing numbers of African Americans is that as the U.S. continues to shift to a low-skilled, low-wage economy, the labor force is also contracting, with the result being that large numbers of African American workers and the poor are destined to not be able to secure full time employment during their entire lives! And for those lucky enough to secure a job, the new jobs that are projected in the U.S. will be in such low-paying occupations as fast food, food prep, retail, and healthcare aides."[33]
  • Read more about Ajamu Baraka.

Libertarian ticket

Libertarian Party Gary Johnson

Gary-Johnson-(New Mexico)-circle.png
  • In an interview with New York Magazine published on June 14, 2016, Gary Johnson offered this pitch to a Trump supporter who lost his job to a dying industry: “Look, I’d tell you what I’ve done, what I did in New Mexico, where I don’t think I ever compromised my Libertarian views. I’d tell you how I will apply these same ideas to the country: the basic platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.” When pressed to explain how he would convince a voter to support him, Johnson said, “Convinced? I don’t know about that. I’d tell him what I had to say, let him think it over. If he still thought he’d vote for Trump, he should vote for Trump. I’m not going to try to convince anyone how they should vote.”[34]
  • In an interview with The Daily Caller in February 2015, Johnson expressed support for right-to-work laws. In his experience running a construction company, Johnson said that he found union workers were some of the best and worst employees. "I had to fire or get rid of the worst and I was able to reward the best. If I was a union shop I would have had to except [sic] both as equals and that’s not real, that’s not the real world. I want to be able to reward the best and I want to be able to get rid of the worst," he continued. Johnson also said he believed that unions contributed to increased government spending because of their prevalence in the public sector.[35]
  • In a February 2012 op-ed for The Washington Times, Johnson criticized the government for impeding employment opportunities. He said, "When I was governor of New Mexico, I had the highest job growth of any of the 50 governors. But I didn’t create a single job - businesses did. I just got government out of their way."[36]
  • Read more of Gary Johnson's public statements on labor and employment.

Libertarian Party Bill Weld

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  • In a June 2016 interview with Newsday, Weld said he wanted federal tax rates "lower and flatter" to encourage savings and entrepreneurship. On jobs, he said, “We will gain more high-wage jobs through free-trade agreements than we’ve lost low wage jobs.”[38]
  • As governor of Massachusetts in the 1990s, Weld vetoed minimum wage increases.[39]
  • Weld instituted work requirements for welfare recipients in Massachusetts before the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted on August 22, 1996.[39]
  • After winning a second term as governor of Massachusetts, Weld signed into law a 55 percent pay raise for state legislators. Weld was re-elected with 71 percent of the vote in 1994.[39]
  • Read more about Bill Weld.

Withdrawn candidates

Democrats

Republicans

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 2016 presidential candidates on labor and employment. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

2016 presidential candidates on labor and employment - Google News

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Gallup, "Most Important Problem," accessed September 13, 2016
  2. ↑ Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey," accessed September 13, 2016
  3. ↑ Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Recession of 2007–2009," February 2012
  4. ↑ Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign website, "Jobs and wages," accessed September 13, 2016
  5. ↑ Donald Trump 2016 campaign website, "ECONOMIC VISION: WINNING THE GLOBAL COMPETITION," accessed September 13, 2016
  6. ↑ Hillary for America, "Hillary Clinton Announces New Details of Middle Class Tax Cut Plan," October 11, 2016
  7. ↑ Hillary Clinton for President, "Hillary Clinton Announces New National Service Reserve, A New Way for Young Americans to Come Together and Serve Their Communities," September 30, 2016
  8. ↑ Fortune, "Hillary Clinton: What I Learned From Being a Mom Who Works," September 29. 2016
  9. ↑ Hillary Clinton for President, "In Orlando, Clinton Vows to Protect the Rights of People with Disabilities," September 21, 2016
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
  11. ↑ Democratic Party, "The 2016 Democratic Party Platform," accessed August 24, 2016
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Politico, "Kaine on the issues: Not always taking the party line," July 23, 2016
  13. ↑ AFL-CIO, "Scorecard for year 2014: U.S. Senate," accessed July 25, 2016
  14. ↑ Tim Kaine United States Senator for Virginia, "Jobs & Economy," accessed July 25, 2016
  15. ↑ CBS News, "Donald Trump claims his economic plan will create 25 million jobs," September 15, 2016
  16. ↑ The Washington Post, "Donald Trump unveils child-care policy influenced by Ivanka Trump," September 13, 2016
  17. ↑ The Wall Street Journal, "Donald Trump Calls for $10 Hourly Minimum Wage, Breaks From GOP Position," July 27, 2016
  18. ↑ Reuters, "Exclusive: Trump could seek new law to purge government of Obama appointees," July 20, 2016
  19. ↑ Republican Party, "The 2016 Republican Party Platform," accessed August 24, 2016
  20. ↑ Congress.gov, "H.R.3094," accessed April 4, 2015
  21. ↑ Congress.gov, "H.R.800," accessed April 4, 2015
  22. ↑ Scheer Intelligence, "Jill Stein-Presidential Candidate," February 8, 2016
  23. ↑ Political People Blog, "Dr. Jill Stein on Foreign Policy, Bernie Sanders and a 'Green New Deal,'" February 5, 2016
  24. ↑ Jill Stein for President, "My Plan," accessed February 17, 2016
  25. ↑ Yes! Weekly, "Fighting for the greater good with Jill Stein," November 11, 2015
  26. ↑ Yes! Weekly, "Fighting for the greater good with Jill Stein," November 11, 2015
  27. ↑ Green Party, "The 2016 Green Party Platform on Social Justice," accessed August 24, 2016
  28. ↑ Twitter, "Ajamu Baraka," October 6, 2016
  29. ↑ Twitter, "Ajamu Baraka," October 6, 2016
  30. ↑ Democracy Now!, "Expanding the Debate: Ajamu Baraka Spars with Pence & Kaine in Democracy Now! Special - Part 2," October 5, 2016
  31. ↑ Twitter, "Ajamu Baraka," October 4, 2016
  32. ↑ Twitter, "Ajamu Baraka," October 4, 2016
  33. ↑ AjamuBaraka.com, " The Political Economy of Black Opposition to Free-Trade Neoliberalism," May 23, 2015
  34. ↑ New York Magazine, "Gary Johnson Takes His #NeverTrump Pitch to Times Square," June 14, 2016
  35. ↑ The Daily Caller, "Gary Johnson Takes On Forced Unionization," February 28, 2015
  36. ↑ The Washington Times, "Johnson: Let's get America moving again," February 2, 2012
  37. ↑ Libertarian Party, "The 2016 Libertarian Party Platform," accessed August 24, 2016
  38. ↑ Newsday, "William Weld focus is on debt and jobs," June 20, 2016
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 39.2 American Spectator, "Understanding Bill Weld," August 25, 2005
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