Current Work

Future of Workers

The world around us is rapidly changing. Even before the pandemic, the future of work was an urgent question, with app-based “gig” work, automation and surveillance technologies already impacting workers.

Through our organizing and research, we are developing and coordinating strategic interventions in our tech-driven economy to produce equitable outcomes for working people and people of color. Technology and the future of work is not inevitable, but created and directed by people. Our work ensures our communities have a say in determining their own future.

Read our recent report on Understanding and Responding to the Changing Nature of Work with Working Partnerships USA and ReWork the Bay which describes how work is changing, what is driving change, how workers, communities and businesses in the Bay Area are responding and what are the signposts toward building the future we want.

Climate Justice & Just Transition

Our climate justice work engages unions, worker centers, and community organizations in the movement to meet international climate goals  and create a just transition for workers into good jobs that benefit communities and the planet. With historically destructive wildfires, long-term droughts and power shut-offs now a regular part of life in California, the climate crisis has a devastating impact on working-class and communities of color.

In 2018, JwJ joined the Steering Committee for the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice, and organized a labor contingent for the largest West Coast mobilization on climate in history. In 2019, JwJ continued to co-convene Labor Rise for Climate, Jobs, Justice and Peace and to build the labor presence in major youth-led climate mobilizations.

Housing for Workers

Housing for Workers is a long-term organizing project to address the affordability crisis in San Francisco. Affordable and secure housing are the top economic security issues for many workers, currently compounded by pandemic-related rent debt and the looming eviction crisis.

Since 2014, we have built connections between tenant advocates and labor partners to move worker organizations into playing a greater role in the housing justice movement. We collaborate with JwJ member Housing Rights Committee on tenant rights education and tenant protection legislation, and the Council of Community Housing Organizations around research, policy and communications strategies to house low-and middle-income workers. We are building a story bank through worker interviews to lift up the stories of workers, especially workers of color, and their housing needs.

In 2019, together with a strong coalition of community, housing and labor partners, JwJ scored a major victory for the city’s low and middle income workers as we pushed for and won SF’s “Housing our Workers” legislation. Introduced by Supervisor Haney, the legislation will generate over $400 million in funding in under a decade for affordable housing for workers and transitional housing for homeless people—all paid for by developers building large offices in the city.

COVID & Just Recovery

The COVID pandemic has been a disaster for workers. Since the shut down began, JwJ has organized support for low-wage workers, workers of color, immigrant workers, undocumented workers, and nontraditional workers such as domestic workers, day laborers and gig workers, focusing on worker’s top economic priorities of income, benefits and housing.

Solidarity & Racial Justice

The most important thing we do as JwJ is to have each other’s backs when times are hardest. JwJ performs a crucial movement role of bringing groups together in intersectional solidarity and building power so that we can win bigger victories together.

Racial justice is explicitly a part of all of our work fighting for low-wage workers of color. We have also created specific projects to support the Movement for Black Lives. In 2014, JwJ founded Labor for Black Lives organizing actions, workshops and member education. In 2020, during the uprisings following the murders of George Floyd and many others, JwJ coordinated with labor partners to organize protests supporting the movement to defund the police and reinvest in communities of color, along with demanding accountability on racial justice from police officer unions.

In 2016, JwJ co-founded Bay Resistance, a broad and diverse network of groups defending our communities from Trump and the Right. In the face of intensifying attacks on immigrants, we fought for a clean DREAM Act, to save Temporary Protected Status and to protect #FamiliesBelongTogether. Responding to waves of local workplace audits and ICE raids, we organized rapid actions with hundreds of people. We supported local families facing deportations and actions that helped close the Richmond immigrant detention center. We helped defend our California sanctuary state laws from the Trump administration, while leading community trainings with workers, businesses and neighbors on how to build a sanctuary neighborhood on the grassroots level.