This session aims to inform EARNCON attendees about strategies that policymakers and advocates are using to advance pro-worker policymaking and supporting the labor movement at the state and local level, with an emphasis on states with anti-labor policies in place, such as “Right-to-Work” laws.

Our discussion will highlight ways to view the intersection of economic and public health outcomes, and how these perspectives can be brought together to design better policy in a post-COVID America.

This session will explore state and local opportunities to help ensure that federally funded projects benefit workers and their communities, deliver on equity, job quality, and climate goals, and build worker power.

In this session, panelists will highlight how to build a successful advocacy plan by forming partnerships that lead to an effective "inside" and "outside" strategy to challenge longstanding austerity approaches, expand working families' power over the state budget by enacting progressive tax reform, and to win dramatic investments in working-class communities.

In this session, EPI experts will lead a discussion among researchers, public sector union representatives, and EARN groups talking to lawmakers and community leaders, to figure out what is happening beneath the headline numbers; how it’s affecting public services; what lawmakers and advocates can do about it; and what it all means with the threat of recession and austerity looming.

In this session, panelists will discuss unemployment insurance (UI) developments at the state and federal levels and explain why UI reform is a racial equity imperative.

This session will focus on three examples of victories that combine good paying jobs, racial equity, and tackling climate change.

This session will explore the use of the Race Class Narrative with organizers from Ohio, describe key lessons from narrative research, and will discuss how to develop an effective narrative strategy in your locality to push for pro-worker policies.

This session will focus on what states can do to build a better care system, inclusive of child care, paid leave, and long-term care provisions including nursing facilities home and community-based services.

This session will bring together our Earn in the South partners to share their efforts and exchange strategies about how to lower barriers to employment and income raised by involvement in the criminal justice system.

Join this session to discuss the state-level strategies that have worked and the immigrant-led workplace organizing that is happening in states around the country.

EARNCon 2023 will lay the groundwork needed for a state- and local-worker-centered research and policy agenda for 2024 and beyond, highlighting approaches and solutions for racial, economic, and gender justice while also building and strengthening a community of researchers, policy analysts, and grassroots organizers.