The White House on Friday announced the launch of worker.gov, a new one-stop website to inform people of their rights and legal options under federal worker protection laws, including how to form a union.
“The tool guides workers on a structured journey that provides them with opportunities to take action or find help if they have had wages stolen, been injured on the job, faced discrimination or been retaliated against for joining together to seek better wages or conditions at work,” the White House said. The launch was characterized as am “initial beta test.”
The announcement comes as the administration is trying to make a concerted effort to boost turnout for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Though ahead in most polls, Clinton is in a tight fight with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in union-heavy states such as Ohio, Nevada and West Virginia.
Worker.gov, which was created with input from union leaders, asks visitors to describe their job, then leads them to a section intended to help them stop violations of labor, civil rights and workplace safety laws and file complaints with the relevant federal agencies.
Much of the information is intended to highlight how being in a union helps a person to make or file complaints. Rights are broken into four subject areas: equality, organizing, safety and wages.
The language is immigrant-friendly, with links to address concerns such as, “I’m being asked to show too much documentation,” “I wasn’t trained in a language I understand” and “I am being treated differently based on my citizenship or immigration status.”
The White House said the website was “developed in response to feedback received during the [2015] White House Summit on Worker Voice, regional worker voice summits, and listening sessions with workers across the nation who found existing government websites detailing their rights difficult to navigate or understand.”
The event was intended to find “innovative strategies” to help workers in new, emerging industries join unions. Featured guests at the event included AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Obama lamented at the 2015 event, “You’ve got a whole millennial generation who knows that they are getting a bad deal [at work] but who do not want to join a union.” He blamed that partly on “laws that make union organizing difficult,” but said it was also because many millennials work in industries such as tech or for companies such as the ride-sharing service Uber that by their very nature are hard to organize.
New ideas and new technologies are needed to bridge that gap, he said.
