Cortney Sanders, NJFAN Institute Director
New York, NY — [September 11, 2025] — The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy (the Institute) at The New School is proud to mark a new chapter in its mission to ensure meaningful employment as a fundamental human right. In partnership with the National Jobs for All Network (NJFAN), the Institute welcomes Cortney Sanders as the inaugural Institute director of NJFAN, where she will lead a renewed national campaign to advance policies securing the right to a good job for all.
At a time when federal job cuts are accelerating, the labor market is softening, and millions of Americans face mounting insecurity, this announcement comes as both urgent and necessary. Recent reports show slowing job growth, fragile employment prospects, and widening precarity across industries that are important to our public infrastructure. Against this backdrop, NJFAN’s renewed push for the right to a good job underscores a bold alternative: that government can and should ensure stable, meaningful work for all—transforming today’s uncertainty into long-term economic freedom, fairness and security.
The National Jobs for All Network is rooted in a simple but powerful belief: everyone who wants to work should have the right to a decent and productive job. Employment is not only a source of income—it is the foundation of dignity, security, and economic agency. A federal job guarantee would make this right real by ensuring that every willing worker can access meaningful, at least living-wage employment that strengthens communities, expands opportunity, and builds a more just economy.
“Dignity is multifaceted; one’s dignity is not limited by work. People are creative and productive by nature and everyone deserves the dignity of a productive job with decent wages, benefits and working conditions,” said Darrick Hamilton, University Professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School and Founding Director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. “A federal job guarantee is not new or radical—FDR called for it in
his 1944 Economic Bill of Rights, and leaders from A. Philip Randolph to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. championed it in the 1966 Freedom Budget. Let’s reverse the trend of dismantling our public sector and instead put our country to work addressing the existential crises of climate change, the care economy, and our deteriorating public infrastructure.”
Sanders comes to the position with over a decade of experience at the intersection of racial equity, fiscal policy, and social insurance. She previously held senior roles at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she focused on state fiscal policy, and at the U.S. Social
Security Administration, where she led efforts to examine labor market barriers and retirement outcomes. A strategic thinker and coalition builder, she has worked across federal, state, and nonprofit sectors to ensure that public policy delivers for all communities.
Under Sanders’ leadership, NJFAN will expand its visibility and policy advocacy to win support for federal legislation that guarantees employment as a fundamental right. This effort builds on decades of scholarship and activism from NJFAN co-founder Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Professor Emerita of Social Work at Adelphi University, and honors the legacy of Helen Lachs Ginsburg, Professor Emerita of Economics at Brooklyn College, whose pioneering vision and generous bequest made this new phase of work possible.
“Building on FDR’s ‘Economic Bill of Rights’—often called the ‘speech of the century’—we’re committed to securing the right to living-wage work,” said Goldberg. “Through NJFAN’s partnership with Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School, and with Cortney Sanders leading the National Jobs for All Network, we’re accelerating progress toward a Federal Job Guarantee.”
The case for a federal job guarantee is both moral and practical. By ensuring that everyone has the right to decent work, a job guarantee would:
● Eliminate involuntary unemployment;
● Stabilize the economy by reducing insecurity and inequality;
● Build a more skilled and resilient workforce; and
● Deliver essential services and infrastructure in communities across the country.
With this new initiative, NJFAN and the Institute are bringing together policymakers, labor leaders, scholars, and grassroots organizers to make the promise of a job guarantee a reality.
“Together, we can create an economy where everyone has the opportunity to thrive through the transformative power of guaranteed, meaningful employment. Where dignity is restored because people have a right to a good job within an economy that centers people and the environment in which we live,” Sanders said.
About the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy
The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy (the Institute) advances research to understand structural inequalities and works to identify groundbreaking ways to promote equity. A premier cross-disciplinary hub, the Institute draws on faculty across The New School in New York City, which has long fostered innovative thinking about power, structure, design, politics, economics, and society. The Institute engages with researchers and practitioners, including community and business leaders, policymakers, philanthropists and journalists, across the nation and around the world. Learn more at racepowerpolicy.org.