Advancing Worker
Strategies in the South

The political and economic landscape of the South may best indicate democracy’s overall health and the economic security of ordinary people within our democracy. Thus, the fight for democracy in the United States must be waged in the region that has most undermined the promise of democracy.

To that end, Jobs with Justice launched the Advancing Black Strategists Initiative (ABSI) in fall 2020. We began with a vision to create a cohort of Black and Southern economic justice and labor-focused strategists committed to leading, developing, and advancing policies and campaigns that support the collective power-building of working people. ABSI focuses explicitly on the southern states where the majority of Black Americans reside. ABSI teaches, develops, and collaborates with organizers, lawyers, economists, government officials, journalists, and funders who center the participation of working people in governing at work and beyond.

The Advancing Black Strategists Initiative has grown to include the ABSI Movement Fellowship, which gives Black and Southern worker-leaders direct field experience in campaigns to expand organizing and collective bargaining power in the U.S. South. In 2025, we expanded yet again, creating The Labor Institute in partnership with the W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University. The Labor Institute offers rigorous coursework alongside hands-on apprenticeship opportunities, commissions research, and fosters public discourse centered on Southern worker organizing, elevating their experiences to inform broader labor theory and contribute to global conversations on building a healthy, democratic society. For more information, please contact sherman@jwj.org.

Taking on Amazon

Our collective power is sustained through victories that address workers as whole people. We choose fights that deeply impact the lives of working people because that’s how we build long-term power and deliver material wins. Across the country, women, people of color, immigrants, people living with disabilities, and other workers fighting at the margins of society are transforming their workplaces into engines of democracy, negotiating for wages that sustain families, demanding a voice in workplace decisions, and asserting their right to dignity at work.

We also believe that we need to take on the largest corporations in our economy - those that drive standards across entire sectors - in order to shift the balance of power between workers and bosses and build real economic democracy. 

This is why Warehouse Life and Jobs with Justice launched a joint campaign to combat Amazon’s war on women in the workplace. Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., and women make up 49.1% of workers in Amazon warehouses, most of whom are of childbearing age. Yet, thousands of pregnant workers have shared stories that describe a pervasive pattern of Amazon delaying or denying pregnant workers accommodations protected by federal law and retaliating against workers who fight back. Workers have reported widespread economic and physical harm, including costly medical procedures and even miscarriages as a result. 

In response, we're demanding that Amazon adopt a pregnancy accommodation policy developed by pregnant and formerly pregnant Amazon workers and put enforcement power into the hands of workers on the shop floor.  To date, our joint campaign is the only worker-led effort to have spoken directly with Amazon's corporate office. By centering the fight against gender discrimination, we are forcing the company to engage workers directly. But winning against a company like Amazon will take all of us. Get involved.