Major Panel – WHY INEQUALITY MATTERS: 
WAGE DISPARITY and INCOME INEQUALITY - WELCOME to the NEW ECONOMY

Saturday Sept 6^th, 8:45-10:15 am

Bill Fletcher, Saket Soni, Chuy Garcia, with Lilian Jimenez as moderator.

Description:

This Major Panel will focus on the issue of Income Inequality, a hot topic since the Occupy Movement put it front and center, as well as the current struggles to fight its growth.

In a context of globalized neoliberalism and austerity, the incomes of the wealthiest 1% continue to skyrocket while the incomes of everyone else stagnate and union density declines to historic lows. Structural unemployment has become intransigent, traditional long-term employment is replaced by low wage contingent work, and those who have jobs work longer hours and more productively, but with less security and little to show for it economically. In this sense, some argue that the working conditions of low wage and immigrant workers, mostly people of color, are becoming the new status quo for all workers.

The panelists, all active in the struggle for workers’ rights and the fight for economic justice, will discuss past efforts such as the 1960s War on Poverty as well as the rise of the current low wage workers’ movements.  One emphasis of the panel will be on what NLG members can learn from past experiences and what role the NLG organizationally and its members individually can play to engage, support and build the campaign to support low wage workers and the fight against income inequality.