Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing A Right To A Job

10 A Constitutional Amendment

10 A Constitutional Amendment Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose that what they did to be beyond amendment. . . . I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. . . . But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . . We might as well require a man to still wear the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. —Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816 America values work. We value self-sufficiency. Because of that, it is now time to make the right to a job at a living wage part of our national promise to one another. It is time again to amend our Constitution . As a country our highest civic values are incorporated into our Constitution . These are promises we make to each other. Many of our most cherished constitutional promises to each other are promises that came about as amendments to our original Constitution: freedom of speech, outlawing slavery, the right of women to vote. These rights were not always part of our constitutional promise to each other. Freedom of speech was added as the First Amendment to our Constitution in 1791, fifteen years after our country was formed. The Thirteenth Amendment, guaranteeing people the right not to be enslaved, was added in 1865. The right of women to vote was guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. While I have been discussing and writing about the idea of a constitutional amendment for quite some time, others have also been pushing for a universal right to employment at fair wages.1 While not all have suggested amending the Constitution to incorporate a right to a job at a living wage, all have advocated for a right to work and to earn 93 94 Chapter 10 wages sufficient to support a family. Adolph Reed Jr. and the Labor Party have been arguing for a constitutional amendment for years.2 David Gil and Philip Harvey have each written in support of universal employment at decent wages.3 Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. picked up on the good work done by the National Jobs for All Coalition and authors Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and Sheila Collins and has continued the push.4 The appeal of the idea is such that it seems to have arisen in several places independently—further indication of the potential for future widespread support. By amending our Constitution to include the right to a job at a living wage, we are making a solemn promise to one another—a promise that those among us who want to work will always have the opportunity to do so and that those who work full-time will earn enough to be self-supporting. As a nation, polls consistently show that we already support these principles. Incorporating them into our Constitution will keep them high on our list of national priorities. As constitutional rights, the right to a job at a living wage will be a national promise that our legislative, executive, and judicial branches will help us work toward. Our Constitution does not automatically make any right happen, but it does lay the foundation for how our laws should be working. For example, although our Constitution promises all of us equal protection under law, few would consider that we as a nation have achieved that. Yet, because the promise is in our Constitution, we are pledged to continue to try to make it possible. In my first class of every semester, I stretch my hands out wide and tell my students that one hand represents the law and the other justice. The distance between them represents the gap between what the law is and what justice is. Our job, I remind them, is not to pretend that law and justice are the same, but to narrow the gap. That is what our Constitution tries to do—point us in the right direction to help us narrow the gap. Our Constitution is the foundation document that guides us as we govern our nation. It embodies our fundamental promises to one another and sets out the procedures by which we resolve our disputes. There is a well-founded reluctance to amend the...