As we clean up our backyards and barbecues after celebrating America’s independence this week, it’s important to also remember the less-than-positive aspects of our nation’s exceptionalism. In fact, there are plenty of ways in which our country’s distinctive traits actually hurt us all — especially our workers.
Policies that support and protect working families vary greatly by country. How is the U.S. doing compared to its peers?
Not well, according to new Oxfam research. The U.S. is falling drastically behind similar countries in mandating adequate wages, protections and rights for millions of workers and their families.
On the one hand, this doesn’t make sense. The U.S. is among the wealthiest countries in the world, by many measures: per capita wealth, per capita (after-tax) income and gross domestic product. And yet millions of workers are without access to paid leave, strong wages and protections in their workplace.
This makes the U.S. a far outlier. Here, benefits like paid sick leave, paid parenting leave and employer-provided healthcare are viewed as privileges for the few. But in most of our peer nations, these privileges are rights, mandated by law to apply to all workers.
Oxfam’s recent research consistently found the U.S. at or near the bottom of an index of economic peer countries (those belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD) when measuring labor laws on three dimensions: wages, worker protections and rights to organize....
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