Issue Position: Income Inequality

Issue Position

To support working people in our state and take on growing income inequality, Maura believes we first have to do three things: 1) raise the minimum wage and tie it to the rising cost of living, 2) achieve a progressive tax structure so that the investments we must make in our future are not shouldered by those with the least, and 3) support unionization across industries and workplaces to give workers the voice and collective bargaining power to create good paying jobs that support healthy, working and middle class communities. As the next Attorney General, Maura will be an advocate for those reforms. The next Attorney General is charged with enforcing our fair labor laws and Maura will bring additional resources necessary to protect workers from abuse or exploitation.

Addressing economic inequality and improving access to opportunity also requires that every resident of Massachusetts have access to the basic building blocks of our society -- education, health care, housing, transportation, employment, and a safe neighborhood. While some may not consider transportation to be a civil rights issue, there are racial disparities in commuting times and public transportation is often unavailable to our lowest-paid night workers. When a workplace is inaccessible, so is a job. When a struggling family is further set back by an unaffordable loan with hidden fees, a predatory for-profit school, medical debt or unpaid wages, we all lose. An Attorney General can directly help close the economic inequality gap by taking on these sorts of unjust practices.

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