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Community Organizations & Labor Leaders Call on Chairman Mendelson to Renounce “Moratorium”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, December 2, 2016 CONTACT: Ari Schwartz DC Jobs With Justice; ari@dcjwj.org or 202-674-3228 Community Organizations & Labor Leaders Call on Chairman Mendelson to Renounce “Moratorium” On the eve of a Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress, D.C. Council Chairman shockingly announces refusal to consider further progressive legislation. Washington, D.C. – Community organizations and labor unions applaud the news that the Universal Paid Leave Act will move to a vote in the D.C. Council on December 6th and look forward to it passing by the end of the year. But in announcing a revised proposal of the legislation on Tuesday, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson buried a brief and shocking statement at the end of his press release. Seemingly to placate businesses that “may be unhappy that this bill establishes a new tax on them,” the Chairman said he will “support a two-year moratorium on the adoption of similar bills, such as mandating scheduling requirements or nurse staffing ratios in hospitals.” Various community organizations and labor unions that advocate for and represent working people across the District were stunned and deeply concerned to see the Chairman make such an unprecedented statement. Elizabeth Falcon, Executive Director of DC Jobs With Justice, called Chairman Mendelson’s statement “the opposite of the leadership we need in this new era.” She said, “The Council will improve the lives of thousands of District residents when it passes Paid Family Leave. But that alone is not enough to have a good life in the District. Workers already face barriers to enough work, dignified working conditions, and opportunities for real careers. And what new issues... read more
This Giving Tuesday, Invest in DC Jobs With Justice
Please follow the form below to contribute to DC Jobs With Justice this Giving Tuesday. Or you can go to the fundraiser directly by clicking here. If you cannot contribute at this time but want to support our work, click here to... read moreStatement on last week’s election result
Now more than ever, we must build and strengthen our local solidarity Last week’s presidential election put into office a candidate who campaigned on mass deportation and incarceration, racism, islamophobia, and mysogyny. Away from the campaign, the President-Elect’s Las Vegas hotel refused to bargain with its employees, prompting a cease-and-desist order from the NLRB. We will face more of these threats and attacks in the months to come, and our most marginalized communities will bear the brunt of these attacks. It is more important than ever for us to build deep solidarity with our neighbors who face threats, hate, and oppressive policies. That starts at home, locally. National attempts to undermine unions, to gift giveaways to corporations, and to target our immigrant neighbors will undoubtedly have a front here in DC. We must keep building community-labor solidarity here at home and support the national movement for local organizing to win wide-spread change. The bedrock of Jobs With Justice has always been the “I’ll Be There” pledge. That remains true today, more than ever. Will you be... read more
Meet the DC JWJ team!
We’ve had some changes around here! If you didn’t know, we have a couple new staff members on board at DC Jobs With Justice. That’s all the more reason for you to join us at this year’s “I’ll Be There” Awards on October 20th to get to know all of us! You can purchase tickets to the Awards by clicking... read more
D.C. Councilmembers Turn their Back on Residents, Punt Instead of Ensuring Full-time Jobs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, September 20, 2016 CONTACT Elizabeth Falcon, Executive Director of DC Jobs With Justice; Elizabeth@dcjwj.org or 202-674-2872 D.C. Councilmembers Turn their Back on Residents, Punt Instead of Ensuring Full-time Jobs By tabling Just Hours legislation today, the D.C. Council sends message to thousands of people that they must keep waiting for livable jobs. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Elizabeth Falcon, Executive Director of the DC Jobs With Justice, released the following statement after the D.C. Council tabled the Hours and Scheduling Stability Act at today’s Committee of the Whole meeting: “The D.C. Council should have kept Hours and Scheduling Stability Act on track to make sure our community has access to stable hours and work schedules. Workers in the District deserve access to full time hours and schedules in advance. Today the Council let down thousands of our neighbors who work in retail and food service and all of their families. By tabling this legislation, they gave into big business lobbyists instead of looking out for hard-working residents in our lowest paying industries. “We thank Councilmembers Mary Cheh, LaRuby May, Brianne Nadeau, and Elissa Silverman for standing with working people and voting to advance the bill forward today. “We’ve heard the narrative that it is too much at once to act on both Paid Family Leave and the Hours and Scheduling Stability Act, when these are in fact the basics of what people need to sustain their families. “Even with more D.C. residents living in poverty than before the recession and with many residents who want to work full-time only finding part-time work, the D.C. Council decided to... read more
The 2016 “I’ll Be There” Awards
Each year, the DC Jobs With Justice coalition comes together to celebrate our work and recognize our leaders. Please join us for this year’s “I’ll Be There” Awards! REGISTER AND PURCHASE YOUR TICKET HERE! Thursday, October 20, 2016, 6:00 – 8:00 PM All Souls Church, 1500 Harvard St NW, Washington, D.C. Click here to see the full event information, ticket and sponsorship details, and more! This year’s “I’ll Be There” Award Winners: C.H.O.I.C.E. Organizing Committee Many Languages One Voice Committee for Labor Solidarity and Worker Power Pastor Marvin Owens, Michigan Park Christian Church Adam Graubart, DC Paid Family Leave campaign volunteer Hosts: Día Bùi & Darakshan Raja Co-directors of the Washington Peace Center This is a fundraiser event to support the organizing and advocacy work of DC Jobs with Justice! No one will be denied entrance regardless of ability to donate. We will accept cash, check, or credit card donations. Childcare and English-to-Spanish interpretation will be... read more
DC Jobs With Justice Seeks ‘Research Project Coordinator’
Overview: DC Jobs with Justice is a dynamic coalition of labor unions, community organizations, faith institutions, and student activist groups dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of DC workers and residents. For a full list of our organizational members and past campaign work, please visit our website at www.dcjwj.org. Currently, DC JWJ is leading the “Just Hours” campaign to transform service sector jobs into jobs with just hours and fair scheduling practices. We seek to hire a Project Coordinator to oversee a related research project we are conducting. In June 2015, we released a study along with the Georgetown University Kalmanovitz Initiative that found erratic scheduling practices and insufficient hours of work to be widespread issues in the retail and food service industries. In 2016, we will partner with Duke University on a groundbreaking study to assess how unstable work schedules and hours impact parents and family life. The Project Coordinator will lead the pilot phase of that study this summer, with the possibility of continuing on as the Project Coordinator for the subsequent phases of the study. The pilot phase of the study will consist of brief daily surveying of participants for 1 month. This position will report to the Lead Organizer. Job Responsibilities: The Project Coordinator will oversee and implement the pilot phase of the Duke Study through: Participant Recruitment Lead the recruitment of 40 participants for the pilot – these must be parents working in retail or food service with a child under the age of 6 Work with volunteers, interns, other staff, and partner organizations to identify and pursue opportunities to recruit participants Conduct... read more
Introducing Our New Executive Director: Elizabeth Falcon
We are extremely pleased to announce that Ms. Elizabeth Falcon will be the next Executive Director of DC Jobs with Justice. For over a decade, Ms. Falcon has been a passionate advocate for social change in Washington, DC and across the Deep South, with a proven track record of running effective campaigns and maintaining strong coalitions. She is an experienced coalition leader who believes in the power of bringing people and organizations together. Throughout her career, she has led community partners to build consensus on strategic direction, developing effective campaigns such as the Housing For All Campaign and Save Our Safety Net. Under her leadership at Coalition for Non-Profit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED), the Housing for All campaign became a well-recognized force, with over 4,000 individual supporters and hundreds of participating organizations, winning over $300 million in affordable housing investments. As a result, she is a trusted partner with advocates, labor, and diverse communities across the District. We are thrilled to have Ms.Falcon join our team as the Executive Director. Her campaign planning skills, strong local relationships, and dedication to developing affected DC residents to lead campaigns will be critical as our organization moves into the future. Ms. Falcon officially starts at DC JWJ on August 15, 2016. Our current Executive Director, Nikki Lewis, will step down on August 31,... read more
Nikki Lewis says farewell; DC JWJ announces search for new Executive Director
Dear DC Jobs With Justice Family! The time has come for me to transition out of my role as Executive Director of DC Jobs With Justice. My last day as ED will be August 31, 2016. I am eternally grateful for the 7 years I’ve been a part of the DC JWJ family so far – over three years on the Steering and Executive Committees, and over 3 years as the Executive Director. When I think about what we’ve accomplished together in such a short period of time, my eyes well up. Paid sick days! Wage theft prevention! Minimum wage increases! Ban the Box! Candidate forums and GOTV! Strong new contracts for grocery store workers, Verizon workers, painters, and transit workers! Trainings! All the research and media! And that’s not even mentioning the work we’re on the verge of winning together right now: #DCJustHours #PaidLeave4DC #DCfor15 and #OneFairWage DC Jobs With Justice is a tireless, dedicated, brilliant group of people and organizations who I owe so much to. Thank you to all the people who’ve loved and taught and held me through these incredible years of growth – both personally and organizationally. Thanks to you, I am confident that DC JWJ and I will both step gracefully into the next chapter of our work. Although I am stepping down as Executive Director, I am not leaving the movement or the city. In fact, I am transitioning in order to continue growing the movement for implementation of workers’ rights, this time from the other side. My goal is to become a DC high road employer who leads by example and... read more
Press release: Leaked video shows majority of Chamber members support predictable schedules
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 4, 2016 CONTACT: Bailey Dick, 419-260-6044, bailey@jwj.org Leaked Video Shows Majority of Chamber Members Support Predictable Schedules Washington, D.C. – Footage of a webinar leaked to The Washington Post today shows that the majority of state Chamber of Commerce members support fair scheduling policies, and suggests Chamber lobbyists may be misrepresenting their members in their opposition of predictable scheduling policies. The video includes results of an internal poll that found 78 percent of current or prospective Chamber members support measures that would require employers to provide advance notice of schedules and end abusive “on-call” shifts that leave without a guarantee of work or pay for their time. These and other sustainable scheduling measures are already required under new rules enacted in San Francisco, and are under consideration in a half-dozen other communities across the country. The Chamber poll underscores the widespread support for setting standards that make sure that working people have schedules that allow them pay to their bills, plan their lives and take care of their loved ones. The landmark legislation to improve schedules for 40,000 retail employees in San Francisco was passed unanimously by the city’s Board of Supervisors, and a January poll found that 86 percent of D.C. residents would support pending legislation that would mandate more stable hours and predictable work schedules from employers. Dozens of national retailers have also ended or pledged to end the use of on-call schedules in their stores after public, employee and legal pressure to do so. “This video proves what we already know to be true: That the overwhelming majority of people support the creation... read moreEVENTS
In D.C., a Call for Just Hours
This week, employees of companies like Marshalls, McDonald’s and Macy’s told nearly 100 Washington, D.C. residents gathered at Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church how unstable hours and so-called “just-in-time” scheduling practices take a toll on their families and their ability to make ends meet. The community hearing kicked off the launch of the DC Just Hours campaign, and gave the men and women who work in D.C.’s service industry a chance to talk about their experiences, and for them, along with representatives from community organizations and elected offices to present policy solutions for a problem ripe to be solved. Those who spoke at the hearing, hosted by the DC Jobs With Justice Workers’ Rights Board, included not only employees, but also education advocates, faith leaders and elected officials. In a report on D.C. employer scheduling practices released last month by DC Jobs With Justice along with Jobs With Justice Education Fund, DC Fiscal Policy Institute and Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, a survey of 436 respondents in the retail and restaurant/food service industries found that D.C. employees are granted too few hours on too short notice, challenging their ability to lead a good life. At the hearing, testimony given from people who work for fast food and retail companies confirmed the report’s findings. RasImani Diggs, a clerk at Marshalls described her experience asking her supervisor for additional hours: “We ask for more hours, but it’s always the same song. They say, ‘We don’t have enough,’ but then hire 15 more people.” “Just-in-time” scheduling practices, where employees are asked to come and go depending on how... read more
New DC JWJ Report Reveals Unfair Scheduling Practices in DC
Today, DC Jobs With Justice, Jobs With Justice Education Fund, DC Fiscal Policy Institute and Georgetown University Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor released the first-ever study on service sector scheduling practices in Washington, D.C. Read the Executive Summary here The report, “Unpredictable, Unsustainable: The Impact of Employers’ Scheduling Practices in D.C,” draws on a survey conducted in 2015 with hundreds of people employed in the District, focusing on the retail and restaurant/food service industries—the broadest citywide study of scheduling practices in the service industry to date. In line with previous research, it finds that “just in time” approaches to scheduling negatively impact many D.C. employees’ lives, often resulting in erratic and unpredictable hours for the women and men who serve our food, stock our shelves and sweep our floors. Employees are granted too few hours on too short notice, resulting in unpredictable incomes and work schedules that make it hard to budget, arrange childcare, continue with education or hold down a second job to try to make ends meet. You can read the full report here Some Key Findings: Low Pay Common: The typical employee works 32 hours per week at a pay rate of $10 per hour resulting in an annual income of approximately $16,000 More Hours Needed: Four out of five people said it was very important or somewhat important to get more hours. Second Jobs Required: Nearly one-quarter of individuals work at least one additional job. Unpredictable Schedules: A typical respondent faces a 13 hour range in weekly hours per month, receiving as little as 25 hours some weeks and a high of 38 hours... read more