EARNCon 2026

  • Pre-conference Session: EARN Executive Directors’ Strategy Meeting

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    The Executive Directors’ Strategy Meeting is an opportunity for leaders from the network to strengthen relationships; learn about their peers’ work; learn about EPI’s projects and plans for EARN; and strategize together on how we can drive progressive economic and racial justice policymaking at the state and local level.

  • Pre-conference Session: Data Bootcamp

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    In this session, participants will use CPS data to perform analyses in statistical software packages Stata and R.

  • EARNCon Plenary: Welcome and introductions, Keynote address: Liz Shuler, and Panel discussion: Rebuilding worker power and civic engagement in Ohio

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    During this plenary, speakers will welcome EARN groups to the conference and set the stage for what is to come. Panelists will discuss the history of the labor movement in Cleveland and draw parallels between unionization campaigns in Ohio and the rest of the country.

  • EARNCon Plenary: Voices from the frontlines of new union organizing: Worker power, state policy, and racial, gender, and economic justice

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    This session will feature workers sharing their motivations and strategies for organizing new unions in public services, health care, and other frontline occupations, while illustrating opportunities to expand state and local policies that advance worker power.

  • Tracking the demands of the civil rights movement from the 1960s till today

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    This session will inform conference attendees of the policies, strategies, and actions advocated for during the March on Washington and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and then to use these social policy requests as a metric to determine which policies were implemented, which have yet to be realized, and what this means for racial economic justice. 

  • EARNCon Session: The role of local government in advancing and protecting workers’ rights

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    Speakers Danielle Alvarado, Fair Work Center Teri Castillo, San Antonio City Council District 5 Terri Gerstein, Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and Economic Policy Institute LiJia Gong, Local Progress Mazahir Salih, Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa   Session Description This session will provide an overview of all of the different ways (even when […]

  • EARNCon Session: Joining the fight for economic justice, racial justice, and abortion access

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    This session, led in coordination with the National Women's Law Center, will address the ways in which work toward income security, worker justice, and economic justice is deeply intertwined with the fight for abortion access, particularly for Black and Brown women.

  • EARNCon Session: Striking Back: Reorganizing in Right-to-Work States

    The Westin Cleveland Downtown 777 Saint Clair Avenue Northeast, Cleveland, OH, United States

    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.

With thanks to our generous sponsors

 

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Thea” Lee and Mark Simon” style=
Surdna Foundation” style=
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union” style=
Belle Sawhill” style=
Jules Bernstein” style=
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation” style=
“International
Nathan Cummings Foundation
Union Plus
Lisa Lynch
Teresa Ghilarducci and Richard McGahey
Steve Savner
Abundance Strategies” style=
Christine Owens and Sandy Newman” style=

EARNCon 2026

Sept. 30 - Oct. 2

We hope you will join us in Washington D.C. at the Mayflower hotel from Wednesday, September 30 – Friday, October 2, 2026. Details to come!