Why now?
There is unprecedented interest amongst workers across the globe to organize with the aim of reaching a collective bargaining agreement. In this moment of worker upsurge following the ALU election victory on Staten Island and Bessemer’s historically close election, Amazon workers across the entire logistics chain are expressing interest in droves. Elsewhere, Starbucks workers continue to set a new vision for fast food workers everywhere, while workers in countless sectors are taking action and going on strike like never before. Yet as more and more front-line workers take collective action to demand better compensation and conditions, companies are responding with unjust retaliation including terminating workers who are speaking up and organizing.
Jobs With Justice, Coworker.org and Unemployed Workers United recognize this moment as critical in our collective efforts to build a healthy economic democracy where all working people can thrive. We aim to meet the opportunity head-on by launching the Worker Organizer Protection Fund, which will provide worker leaders with resources and platforms to advance their organizing so that they can win big and ignite a movement that spreads across the country.
What will this collaboration do?
- Provide direct relief to help workers’ day-to-day bills and expenses, while also providing worker leaders resources and means to continue their organizing work with some stability and connectedness to larger national institutions.
- Launch innovative “online-to-offline” organizing experiments, utilizing state-of-the-art data and “geofencing” tools to map workplaces and engage workers, build worker committees and create a community of likeminded people seeking change at Amazon warehouses and more. We are already supporting campaigns with Warehouse Workers Resource Center in the Inland Empire and Awood Workers Center in Minneapolis to scale their data and digital tools, expand their reach, and strengthen their campaigns.
- Launch a Fellowship program, resourcing a set of 5-7 worker leaders who have demonstrated a strong voice in their communities and need a boost of resources and connectedness to national institutions to build public awareness of their campaigns.
- Organize workers who have been retaliated against by amplifying local campaigns for reinstatement and build momentum for the Department of Labor to provide Dislocated Worker Grants to all workers who were fired or had their hours cut for organizing. This demand is an opportunity to activate the growing base of retaliated against workers to build power nationally and also gives the Biden administration a clear opportunity to stand with poor and working-class families.
Make a pledge, and get in touch to learn more!
We have raised nearly $2 million to date to support this work, but need to raise $2 million more across our c3 and c4 vehicles by the end of 2022 to bring this work to the scale needed to win. Fill out this form to make a pledge to resource worker organizing in this critical moment!
We know that this wave of worker organizing will continue to build, which means more retaliation and also more opportunities to enact real change in our communities. We need all hands-on deck to ensure that we are building up the worker movements that are essential to strengthen our democracy. To learn more or set time to talk, contact Brenden Sloan at brenden@jwj.org, or Caroline Picker at Caroline Picker caroline.p@uwunited.org.