ECONOMIC FREEDOM AGENDA
The Economic Freedom Agenda (EFA) is our strategy for breaking the link between punishment and poverty by raising standards in the temp industry and expanding access to stable, union jobs for workers with records.
It draws inspiration from the Freedom Budget, introduced in 1966 by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. The Freedom Budget recognized that civil rights and economic justice are inseparable, and that true freedom requires access to decent work, material security, and collective power.
Today, we carry that vision forward under new conditions shaped by mass incarceration and a fractured labor market.
THE PROBLEM
Mass incarceration has reshaped the U.S. economy. More than 114 million people live with a criminal record, facing barriers to work, stability, and dignity long after their sentence ends.
The popular story is that people with records can’t find jobs. The truth is more troubling: people with records are hired into the lowest-wage and most dangerous jobs because they have records. Probation, parole, and court debt leave people with little choice but to accept any work. Refusing a job, missing a payment, or losing work can send someone back to jail.
At the same time, stable union jobs have been replaced by short-term, low-wage work with few benefits and little power. The temp industry sits at the center of this shift, funneling workers with records into disposable jobs, undercutting union standards, and locking people into permanent instability.
Under these conditions, freedom is impossible.
THE SOLUTION
The EFA is both a moral response to economic exclusion and a strategic intervention in the labor market. We target the choke points that trap workers with records in cycles of exploitation and build real pathways to stability.
our objectives
The EFA links two interconnected strategies, raising temp standards and expanding union access, to protect union jobs, build worker power, and end the cycle that traps workers with records in temp labor.
Raise Standards in the Temp Industry
Workers with records are disproportionately concentrated in blue-collar temp jobs, with low wages and unsafe work conditions. When temp agencies can treat workers as disposable, standards fall for everyone. Raising standards in the temp industry is essential to stopping the race to the bottom.
Expand Access to Union Jobs
Union jobs offer stability: fair wages, benefits, dignity, and collective power. Expanding real pathways into unionized work for people with records strengthens unions and raises standards across entire industries.
Our Approach
We build worker power through organizing, coalition-building, and building alternatives to the temp industry, so workers with records can win real stability.
Strategic Campaigns
Corporate and policy campaigns that raise standards and shift power toward workers.
Labor
Alignment
Deep partnerships with unions to create realpathways into stable, dignified jobs.
Union Staffing
Co-ops
Worker-led alternatives to temp models to build wealth, not extract profit.
Publications
Narrative work that exposes how the temp industry works, and how workers can change it.
BUILD WORKER POWER WITH US
Temp worker or worker with a record? Join Beyond the Bars.
Union or community organization? Partner with us.
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