Worker Power Project

EARN’s Worker Power Project focuses on expanding the ability of working people to achieve racial, gender, and economic justice through organizing, collective bargaining, and state and local policy change. Confronting entrenched power imbalances and decades of active suppression of workers’ rights, the Worker Power Project works with EARN groups and partners to ensure all workers—including those long excluded from state or federal legal protections—can freely exercise the right to join together in a union and gain a voice on the job.  

Key project strategies include: 

• Winning state and local policy changes that build worker power and advance racial and gender justice: Identifying and advancing state or local policies that expand rights of workers—including those historically excluded from state or federal legal protections—to freely exercise the right to join together in a union, gain a voice on the job, and collectively bargain with employers;  
• Building worker power research capacity and policy partnerships: Expanding capacity of EARN groups to co-lead research and advocacy on state and local worker power policies, while developing or deepening on-the-ground partnerships among EARN groups, labor unions, and worker centers.
• Developing robust, research-based worker justice narratives: Generating and widely disseminating research reports, case studies, and other published products that tell coherent state, regional, and national stories about worker power and its importance, explain and assess the impact of state and local worker power policies, and shape public discourse on the economic and equity impacts of unions and the importance of expanding workers’ rights to form or join unions 

The project provides active support to EARN groups engaged in building worker power at the state or local level by facilitating partnerships, sharing resources and technical assistance, and developing strategic partnerships among EARN groups, labor unions, and grassroots organizations.