2026 Workers' Agenda

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Raise the Floor Alliance’s Workers’ Agenda outlines priority campaigns and policy recommendations Raise the Floor Alliance (RTF) will pursue. These priorities have been determined by a multi-month process involving informal surveys and engagement of workers across each worker center. RTF members represent a broad base of workers from a diverse set of industries, identities, and geographies in Illinois. RTF unites and leverages our collective power to win policy changes that improve the material conditions of work and life for our communities and grow the strength of our coalition.

This agenda represents the issues that concern our base to have safe, stable, and equitable jobs. Workplace issues include minimum wage discrepancies, extreme temperatures, sexual violence and harassment, violence against day laborers and street vendors, immigration enforcement and retaliation, access to paid family and medical leave, wage theft, and criminal record barriers to employment. We envision a society in which all people can work and live with dignity and have an active voice in their workplace.

Read the full agenda below. Go deeper into our legislative priorities here →

Safety

Workers have a right to safe working conditions free of injury, illness, or harm, conditions that protect both physical safety and psychological well-being. Across Illinois, workers are routinely exposed to preventable dangers on the job. Climate change is intensifying extreme heat and cold, workplace sexual violence remains widespread and underreported, and day laborers and street economy workers face daily threats from violence, exposure, and harassment while seeking work. According to federal data, workplace injuries increase with high temperatures. Working in cold temperatures without adequate protection can cause hypothermia, frostbite, trench foot, and chilblain. Low-wage industries experience disproportionately high rates of sexual harassment and assault. In January, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rescinded its Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace, making it harder for workers to know and speak up about their right to a harassment-free workplace. For day laborers seeking work on the streets, they already face wage theft, violence, and insecurity. And over the last year, they have become targets of ICE’s aggressive and often unlawful deportation effort. Safe working conditions, in all its facets, is a fundamental requirement and a public responsibility.

Extreme Workplace Temperatures Act: Establish statewide workplace standards to protect workers from extreme heat and cold by requiring rest breaks, access to water and shade, protective gear, and indoor temperature monitoring.
Sexual Harassment and Violence Enforcement: Strengthen accountability for workplace sexual violence by improving enforcement mechanisms, increasing penalties, and limiting the use of non-disclosure agreements so survivors can seek justice and collective healing without retaliation or silence.
Safe Hiring Sites for Day Laborers and Street Economy Workers: Create publicly supported safe hiring sites where day laborers and street vendors can seek work in protected environments with access to shelter, restrooms, and safety resources, affirming that labor safety is public safety.

Stability

Workers have a right to consistent, reliable, and supportive employment free from threats, retaliation, or economic coercion. Stable work is the foundation of family and community stability, yet too many workers face constant precarity. Employers routinely use immigration status, unpredictable scheduling, poverty wages, and wage theft to suppress worker voices and cut labor costs. Research shows that wage theft alone costs workers billions of dollars each year, far exceeding losses from other forms of theft. As of May 2025, the number of investigators employed by the U.S. Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is less than half of what it was in 1978 yet covers 4 times as many establishments. Additionally, lack of paid leave forces workers to choose between their health, their families, and their livelihoods. 62% of Illinois families cannot even take the unpaid leave they need without risking their jobs or their economic stability.

Prohibiting Unjust Immigration Enforcement & Retaliation: Protect workers from immigration-based retaliation by enforcing workplace privacy and whistleblower protections and ensuring that labor standards apply to all workers, regardless of immigration status.
Paid Family & Medical Leave: Establish a statewide paid family and medical leave program so workers can care for themselves and their loved ones without risking job loss or financial ruin.
Living Wage for All: Advance a living wage that reflects the real cost of living in Illinois, ensuring that full-time work provides economic stability, racial equity, and dignity.
Strengthening Wage Theft Enforcement: Expand enforcement and accountability to ensure workers are paid what they are owed, treating wage theft as the serious economic crime it is.

Equity

Workers have a right to access jobs regardless of their criminal record background. The mere existence of a record should not determine a person’s ability to work, provide for their family, or contribute to their community. Criminal records are routinely used to exclude qualified workers from employment, reinforcing racial and economic inequities and undermining public safety. In Illinois, 2.2 million people are eligible for records relief but remain locked out of stable work due to cost, complexity, or lack of access to legal support. Now signed into law, the Clean Slate Act will automate record clearance for eligible records, removing unnecessary barriers to employment, housing, education, and civic life. The implementation date for starting the sealing processes is July 1, 2029, and by January 1, 2034, all eligible records will be sealed.

Criminal Record Expungement and Implement the Clean Slate Act: Fully implement and enforce record-clearing policies so workers can access employment, housing, and economic opportunity, recognizing that stable work is essential to rehabilitation, community safety, and collective well-being.