Jobs with Justice Education Fund HQ

JWJEF partnered with Morehouse College and the Black Worker Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies to form the Advancing Black Strategists Initiative (ABSI) in attempts to support southern, Black-led campaigns to create economic democracy through expanded forms of collective bargaining, and then elevate experiences from those campaigns to develop more Black strategists and inform the national and international discourse on ways to build worker power. ABSI uses the South as our primary region of focus because we believe some of the greatest change in this country can occur by leading a counter-framework against the common narrative that working people in the South have little or no power in their workplace or communities. Looking ahead, we plan on launching our Movement Fellows program in early 2022, which will train Black movement leaders and place them in strategic roles in ongoing campaigns throughout the South, of which we are currently targeting through landscape analysis.

Building a grassroots network of sustainable and powerful coalitions, prioritizing leadership by women and BIPOC, capable of strategically organizing locally while supporting and engaging an ever-broadening universe of working people. Including:
• Women and BIPOC in Network Leadership - As an organization led by a Black, queer, nonbinary person, we are committed to projecting a racial and gender justice lens both internally and externally and our network has evolved as we intentionally elevate more women, TGNC, and BIPOC leaders into senior staff positions.
• Increase Network Regrant Capacity – Jobs With Justice aims to expand our annual pool of re-grant dollars that go towards strategic campaigns and membership efforts of our local coalitions, while exploring new fundraising and resourcing structures that will allow for significantly greater resources to be delivered to the field.

To catalyze Biden’s $2.3T infrastructure investment plan, we are launching a campaign to ensure that this bill doesn’t just build-up our physical infrastructure, but also improves our country in ways that right-size historic inequities. In order to truly “Build Back Better” and spur transformational growth, any future infrastructure investments in this country can’t return us to the old status quo of patriarchal white supremacist capacity building that has historically left behind workers in underserved communities. Immigrant, underemployed, women, undocumented and BIPOC workers have rarely if ever benefited from past infrastructure investments, and these communities remain the slowest ones to economically recover from the pandemic. Our infrastructure plans must be inclusive and increase opportunity for all workers so that we aren’t just building up our economy and increasing GDP, but that we are building it in inclusive ways strategies that will truly increase opportunity for all workers.

As our country begins to wrestle with a relatively gridlocked Congress, we know that administrative advocacy will become an important pathway for JWJEF to advance policy change. For instance, the POWER Act (which provides critical labor protections for im/migrants and contains vital safeguards against retaliation by employers) has yet to be reintroduced in Congress, there doesn’t seem to be an effort to do so, and the PRO Act faces a tough fight in the Senate. With that being said, some pieces of the PRO Act and the POWER Act could actually be moved through Biden’s infrastructure plans as well as other administrative actions and that’s exactly what we hope to achieve. Our infrastructure plans should not just benefit employers - if we face an uphill battle for effective legislative change, we need to remain nimble and educate every branch of our government to ensure that BIPOC, women, working families, and undocumented folks are able to benefit from upcoming infrastructure plans. Our work will include educating the administration about the POWER Act and its potential relationship to the Jobs Plan Act, getting the Biden administration to adopt and operationalize allowing undocumented workers to apply for relief when asserting their rights in the workplace that protects them from retaliation by ICE, and ensuring that BIPOC U.S. born workers, women, and BIPOC migrant workers equitably benefit from the creation of millions of good quality jobs from the Jobs Act.

JWJ’s most recent federal priority that has captured the greatest public attention has been the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The PRO Act is a bill which aims to strengthen the federal laws that protect workers’ right to organize into unions and collectively bargain for fair wages, benefits, and other worker protections. JWJ is forging a multi-pronged policy, organizing, and communications strategy to campaign to educate the public on this legislation. As the PRO Act gains momentum, JWJ will be working with different Members of Congress to ensure the legislation doesn’t simply further the status quo of traditional labor models but visions and retains protections for app/gig workers, including language around union protections for workers at franchisees. We have launched an economic democracy campaign that highlights various relevant worker fights that showcase the importance of this bill, including local JWJ campaigns and the current union drive in Bessemer, AL. We will continue to uplift and protect the specific parts of the legislation that aim to create an economic democracy that prioritizes building long-term worker power, especially for low-wage workers of color who have been historically and intentionally excluded from worker protections.