Sioux City, Iowa (CNN) Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has frequently done his presidential campaigning on picket lines, unveiled a comprehensive set of proposals on Wednesday designed to revive and newly empower organized labor.

Sanders' "Workplace Democracy Plan" includes a mix of legislation and promised executive orders, including one that would deny federal contracts to companies that pay their executives 150 times more than their employees or offer wages lower than $15 an hour. The Vermont independent would also push new legislation allowing all federal workers the right to strike and end so-called right-to-work laws.

Sanders has made his support for unions, striking workers and employees agitating for higher wages at major corporations a central theme of his presidential runs. Since entering the 2020 primary, he has confronted Walmart's corporate leadership at its annual shareholders meeting to ask for an increase in its minimum wage, marched alongside McDonald's workers demanding $15 an hour and a union, and joined health care workers protesting the planned closure of a historic Philadelphia hospital.

He has also attacked Amazon over the wages it pays workers and for not paying federal taxes in the last couple of years. When Amazon upped the minimum wages at the company to $15 an hour, he praised the move, but has still regularly criticized its zero federal tax bill.

"Corporate America and the billionaire class have been waging a 40-year war against the trade union movement in America that has caused devastating harm to the middle class in terms of lower wages, fewer benefits and frozen pensions," Sanders said in a statement. "That war will come to an end when I am president. If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class in America, we have got to rebuild, strengthen and expand the trade union movement in America."

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