Building a Just Economy: Insights from Worker Center Leaders

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For nearly two decades, worker centers have been at the forefront of rethinking strategies for addressing economic injustice and building worker power. These labor movement organizations have been engines of experimentation in the realms of worker organizing, narrative change, policy development, and labor-standards enforcement. There is much to glean, and celebrate, from their remarkable body of work.

The Ford Foundation commissioned a series of reports and articles to document transformative strategies that have expanded worker organizing and power over the last decade and to inform strategies in the decade to come.  

This groundbreaking research will inaugurate the Worker Center Library at Center for Economic Development, University of Illinois, set to launch on Labor Day 2021. This living archive will map the significant developments and key lessons of the worker center field, and serve as a resource to the workers’ rights field, along with policy makers, funders, the media and the general public.  

Building a Just Economy: Insights from Worker Center Leaders — co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, The American Prospect, and the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development, is a live panel event bringing the nation’s leading workers’ rights and economic justice advocates together to reflect on the gains made in building worker power, the challenges and opportunities ahead to build a world with workers at the center.

Tuesday, August 31, 2021, 4-5:30pm E.T.

We’ll be streaming live from our YouTube page here.

Register HERE for the event.

Panelists & Moderators:

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FF event all panelists v9

Opening music by: Los Jornaleros del Norte

PROGRAM:

4pm E.T, Panel 1: The Moment is Now: Investing in the Labor Movement of the Future 

Sarita Gupta, Ford Foundation

Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Moderator: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

4:10pm E.T.: Panel 2: Looking Back to Look Forward: Building Workers’ Collective Power 

Sarita Gupta, Ford Foundation

Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Pablo Alvarado, National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, UCLA Labor Center/National Black Worker Center

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

4:30pm E.T.: Panel 3: New Terrains of Worker Organizing

Erica Smiley, National Jobs with Justice

Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Pablo Alvarado, National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Jennifer Rosenbaum, Global Labor Justice

Andrea Dehlendorf, United for Respect

Sekou Siby, Restaurant Opportunity Centers United

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

5:05pm E.T.: Panel 4: Seizing the Moment: New Opportunities for Workers' Rights 

Saket Soni, Resilience Force

Saru Jayaraman, One Fair Wage

Shanika Houlder White,  National Black Worker Centers

Michelle Miller, Coworker

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Closing performance by: Anastancia Cuna, a member leader with NDWA/We Dream in Black and a Board Member of Matahari Women’s Worker Center in Boston.

You can read more about worker centers in this American Prospect series here.