As Democrats line up for 2020, whether they are running for president, the House or the Senate, they would do well to frame their campaigns around the economic policies and motivations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the fall of 2012, I authored an op-ed for the specialty publication Directors & Boards in which I challenged Democrats to “be inspired by FDR’s grand impetus for turning around a troubled economy.”

It’s past time to be “inspired” again!

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In that earlier op-ed, I noted that in his final State of the Union Speech on Jan. 11, 1944, just months before his passing, FDR called on Congress to implement a “Second Bill of Rights,” specifically an “economic bill of rights” that would guarantee:

a job with a living wage,

freedom from unfair competition and monopolies,

homeownership,

medical care and

education.

Roosevelt did not argue for any change to the Constitution. Rather, he contended that these rights — to be implemented politically, not by federal judges — were needed because the political rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had proved "inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness."

Over the course of the ensuing decades, our country made great strides toward achieving these five goals. FDR had already introduced the minimum wage in 1938, and after World War II, wages expanded, homeownership increased, Medicaid and Medicare were created, and college and trade school enrollments soared. All of this coincided with a prolonged balanced expansion of the economy.

Today, though, we’ve fallen far back from these relative high water marks. The real wage today for workers, measured in constant 2018 dollars, at $22.65 is essentially unchanged from 1964 (when it was $20.27) — up only 11.7 percent in 54 years.

The homeownership percentage has shrunk to the mid-1960s level of just around 63 percent. Fewer employers offer quality medical insurance and pensions.

Fully 12 million workers are still unemployed in real terms, with income inequality at an almost unprecedented high level. Right now, almost unbelievably, the richest 1 percent of earners take in 188-times as much as the bottom 90 percent of earners combined.

Simply and sadly stated, there is now very little “equality in the pursuit of happiness.” So it is that we need a new "Third Bill of Rights" to include:

the right of workers to freely join a union, and

the right of all Americans to fair and non-gerrymandered elections.

Years before FDR’s speech in 1944, his National Labor Relations Act recognized the “right to self-organization [and] to form, join, or assist labor organizations.”

Then in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." And of course, the First Amendment has always similarly been read to protect freedom of association.

But since the 1960s, when 30 percent or so of private-sector workers were unionized, the American labor movement has declined significantly. Today, only about 10.7 percent of these workers are unionized.

Without union voices, workers have little or no say in their futures and, pretty obviously from the figures above, also in the real wage level. All the while, too many corporations — multinational and medium-sized alike — challenge workers’ geographic immobility with their own unbridled capital and technological mobility.

I’ve spent a career negotiating deals, and ultimately all negotiations come down to bargaining strength and leverage. When labor is appropriately and responsibly strong, workers realize fair income and career growth, which accrues to the benefit of corporate America and of the country as a whole.

With workers and their wages being challenged today on so many fronts, it needs to be just as illegal to discipline or fire an employee on the basis of union membership as for race, color, sex, religion and national origin.

Of course this Employee Rights Movement can’t leave behind workers in the public sector since the fist of government across the negotiating table can be just as formidable as the fist of management across the corporate table.

The U.S. today needs many more, not fewer, union members because unions represent the best path back to fair dealing. Expanding, not shrinking, union membership would be one of the surest signposts on America’s road back to income equality and fairness in employment.

In protecting the right of workers to organize, we would also be protecting their right to a retirement lived in dignity.

We need to also make fair elections a civil rights issue.

While none of the large corporations, which now dominate American elections, are specifically anti-civil rights, many of these companies, in order to advance their agendas, contribute large amounts of money to federal candidates who often are.

These big-business contributions enable gerrymandered districts, inaccessible voting booths, regressive tax policies, continuing attacks on reproductive rights for women and blatant union busting.

The nation's civil rights, civil liberties and labor organizations should all demand an end to political contributions that work against a fair and inclusive society. If Congress won't respond, then this demand should be taken directly to consumers and the marketplace.

We certainly need to protect and invigorate FDR's Second Bill of Rights, but now we also need to better balance our economy with this "Third Bill of Rights."

Leo Hindery Jr. is co-chair of the Task Force on Jobs Creation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Formerly the CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecessor, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), he is currently an investor in media properties.