Making Progress in 2015 and 2016

Caring Across Generations kicked off a 20-city book tour to promote co-director’s Ai-jen Poo’s The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. The book and the book tour uplifted stories and solutions from professional caregivers, family caregivers and older adults to address America’s new demographic and economic realities, particularly the growing need for caregivers. The events reached almost 6,000 people and sparked dialogue around aging and caregiving across the country. Along the tour, the campaign also distributed resources, like “Let’s Talk” pamphlets to begin family caregiving conversations.

Jobs With Justice was a key partner in planning, shaping and driving turnout for the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute’s National Organizers Workshop. Nearly 20 Jobs With Justice coalition and Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) leaders attended the professional development and strategy trainings for community and labor organizers, and Executive Director Sarita Gupta gave an Ignite talk.

More than 30 Student Labor Action Project activists met with 19 Congressional staff during the National Student Lobby Day to talk about what the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) means for young people’s futures. They got a solid commitment from Representative Ruppersberger’s office to vote against Congressional Fast Track authority for the TPP, which was significant since the legislator had yet to go on the record on the issue until that meeting. CWA and the Sierra Club trained students to prepare them for lobbying and for organizing teach-ins on their campuses.

Jobs With Justice launched a new website that explains the basics of income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness to borrowers. In addition to the website, Jobs With Justice also educated thousands of people on options for reducing their student debt by hosting webinars throughout the year featuring experts from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education.

Jobs With Justice, Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, Working Families Organization and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights launched a national campaign to catalyze a serious debate about the daily economic struggles of American families and what we must do as a nation to assure that everyone has access to a good job. The five partners are all committed to both a narrative strategy and to waging powerful local campaigns that move a bold agenda, including guaranteeing good wages and benefits; valuing families and transforming the home-care and child-care industries; unlocking opportunity in the poorest communities with large-scale investments in places where racial bias and sustained disinvestment have produced concentrated poverty; building a clean energy economy; and taxing concentrated wealth.

The Jobs With Justice Education Fund coordinated Labor Research and Action (LRAN) Network, along with partners from the University of Illinois, Ms. Foundation, Rutgers University, and Georgetown University, hosted a day-long networking and leadership gathering of 60 women from universities, unions, think tanks and community-based organizations who are strengthening women’s collective power as working people. Throughout the event, participants shared some of the breakthroughs in their research, organizing, or policy work, highlighting efforts leading to advancements for women.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker agreed to a contract that guarantees a $15 an hour starting wage for more than 35,000 personal care attendants. Massachusetts Jobs With Justice worked to support homecare providers in SEIU 1199 to win the landmark agreement for a fair return on their care work.

With strong partnership from the Caring Across Generations campaign, the White House Conference on Aging included an important conversation on the care workforce and the need for a sustainable wage for caregivers. The campaign shaped and participated in the administration’s five regional forums that led up to the conference, including one in Cleveland on April 27 at which Executive Director and Caring Across Generations Co-director Sarita Gupta spoke.

The Debt-Free Future campaign developed and facilitated (Un)Popular Economics trainings to empower working people with a foundational understanding of student debt and with tools to formulate campaign plans to challenge the student debt crisis. After the first training in August in Seattle, there were additional sessions in Miami, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Denver, and dozens of those trainees were also trained to facilitate (Un)Popular Economics sessions themselves so they could engage union members with tools to help reduce their student debt burden.

After the Missouri legislature passed anti-worker right-to-work legislation, it was vetoed by the governor and faced a veto override vote in September. Missouri Jobs With Justice once again jumped in to contribute its broad faith-labor alliance to the ground game needed to win. The coalition helped stop this attack on working people by organizing delegation visits to key legislative offices, engaging influencers and grasstops leaders to place opinion pieces in the media and mobilizing dozens of activists to canvass in key districts.

Jobs With Justice leaders spoke at the White House as part of this important gathering, which underscored the need for our nation’s leaders to ensure the freedom of working people to negotiate collectively and make way for new organizing models that allow Americans to flourish. Executive Director Sarita Gupta participated in the opening panel. She emphasized examples of how unions today are protecting and advancing the voices of working people, while also reinforcing the need to look at innovative ways of solving the evolving challenges men and women face from unfair bosses and workplaces. Student Labor Action Network Organizers Beth Huang was also featured on a panel about how millennials are coming together to improve their workplaces.

The Discount Foundation created the Legacy Award Program to honor an outstanding individual in the worker justice movement and carry its important work forward before shutting down. Jobs With Justice oversees this new program with the Neighborhood Funders’ Group’s Working Group on Labor and Community Partnerships. Alfred Marshall, an organizer with STAND with Dignity was the first recipient of the award, receiving a $20,000 stipend to sustain his work to win back power for structurally unemployed and unemployed Black men and women in New Orleans.

December 10 – Jobs With Justice joined the Teamsters and Stand Up to ALEC to deliver 30,000 petitions to UPS urging the company drop its membership in the right-wing advocacy group ALEC.

Dozens of employees, experts, business owners and community leaders testified at a City Council hearing for the Hours and Scheduling Stability Act, a measure led by DC Jobs With Justice that would bring more stable schedules and fuller employment to thousands of people who live and work in the District. The bill has the backing of eight councilmembers, and a wide majority of D.C. residents say they support the measures included in the legislation.

Nearly 800 Jobs With Justice leaders, activists and allies converged on Washington, D.C., for our 2016 National Conference. Attendees spent two days learning from each other and strategizing for future campaigns, as well as talking through the connection between racial justice and economic justice. Key highlights included rousing remarks from U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez followed by an action and a march with people who work in retail chains and restaurants in D.C. coming together for a fair return on their work.

Research Director Erin Johansson testified in front of the Connecticut Senate Human Services Committee on behalf of the proposed Low-Wage Employer Fee. The measure would require the state’s large corporations to either provide family sustaining pay or chip into a fee for critical public services, so employees, communities, and taxpayers are not stuck bearing the burden of their low wages.

Executive Director Sarita Gupta spoke at the National Voices of Medicare Summit in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Caring Across Generations campaign to discuss the ways in which we can build a sustainable care network that supports providers, consumers, and families.

The Labor Department updated its rules governing overtime pay, ensuring millions more people have the right to be paid for all the hours they work. Jobs With Justice advocated for improvements to overtime regulations for more than a year, and Executive Director Sarita Gupta testified in front of the Senate Small Business Committee in support of expanded overtime protections in May 2016.

Jobs With Justice Executive Director Sarita Gupta spoke at the White House’s first-ever United State of Women Summit. Sarita addressed a standing-room-only crowd about the need for more women to have a say over their work to achieve economic empowerment.