By Doug Cunningham

In Washington D.C. today the Economic Policy Institute is hosting a forum on its Agenda for Shared Prosperity program called Work That Works. As EPI Vice-President Ross Eisenbrey explains, it’s a look at how the relationship between workers and their employers can be changed to benefit working families.

[Eisenbrey 1]: “How to get better benefits for working people, to get the kind of sick leaves and vacations policies that are prevalent in the rest of the industrialized world - and to restore the bargaining power of the average employee."

Eisenbrey says the public has rejected conservative economic policies that have enriched a few while leaving at least 80 percent of working America behind. The Agenda for Shared Prosperity is an overhaul of the social contract on a range of issues from healthcare, to trade policies, retirement security, paid sick leave and the right to organize unions.

[Eisenbrey 2]: “Employees are not sharing in a fair way in the growth of the economy and in the benefits of the economy. We've had tremendous productivity improvements over the last twenty years and that should have lifted living standards for average working Americans and in fact it hasn't."