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Kamala Harris and Liz Shuler: Unions can help America build back better after COVID-19

Kamala Harris and Liz Shuler
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This Labor Day, America’s working families are facing unprecedented challenges.

COVID-19 continues to ravage our communities, with thousands falling ill and hundreds dying every day. More than 27 million people are receiving some form of unemployment assistance in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with job losses hitting women and workers of color hardest of all.

Michigan’s unemployment rate has more than doubled what it was in March — and the current anti-worker Senate majority left Washington last month without renewing expanded unemployment benefits that were helping families make ends meet. And with the start of the school year around the corner, parents are struggling to work while coping with remote-learning classrooms and shuttered child-care centers.

Our economy won’t recover until the pandemic is under control — but stopping COVID-19 and returning to the status quo isn’t good enough for American workers. We need to build back better. We need to create more jobs by investing in the industries that make our economy strong, including infrastructure, clean energy, manufacturing and care work — and embed racial justice into the core of our agenda, so our economy at last works for everyone. That will be the priority under a Biden-Harris administration.

Read the full column in the Detroit News.