Speakers
- Carrie Cole, The Bail Project Louisville
- Erin George, Clean Slate Initiative
- Tachana Marc, Florida Policy Institute
- Dominique Martin, New Virginia Majority
Session Description
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. Participants will visit multiple stations in a science fair style where a host will facilitate dialogue regarding four different topics: criminal fines and fees; occupational licensing; expungement and sealing; and cash bail. Participants will have an opportunity to rotate to new stations to join the conversation about different topics. After four rotations, participants may go back to any station they like to continue their conversations and exchange contact information with other participants.
Speakers
- Jackson Voss (Moderator), Louisiana Budget Project
- LiJia Gong, Local Progress
- Amanda Posson, AFT Texas
- Patty Quinzi, Every Texan
Session Description
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.
Confirmed Speakers
- Davere Godfrey, Jobs to Move America
- Frank Manzo, Illinois Economic Policy Institute
- Amanda Woodrum, Policy Matters Ohio
Session Description
Before Congress passed the largest investment in clean energy jobs in history with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August of 2022, action at the local, state, and regional level was already paving the way toward climate and economic justice. This session will focus on three examples of victories that combine good paying jobs, racial equity, and tackling climate change. The first victory takes place in Los Angeles and Alabama, where Jobs to Move America (JMA) was able to secure a community benefits agreement (CBA) with the largest bus manufacturer in the country for a $500 million contract with LA Metro. The second victory is the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which Illinois enacted in September 2021, and has been heralded as one of the nation’s most sweeping clean energy bills ever passed. Finally, the session will explore the work of Reimagine Appalachia, a regional coalition of labor, community groups, and several EARN groups that played a pivotal role in passage of federal legislation to build a 21st century economy in Appalachia that builds worker solidarity.
Confirmed Speakers (More to Come!)
- Maya Pinto, National Employment Law Project (NELP)
- Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
- Chrissy Lynch, Massachusetts AFL-CIO
- Cherri Murphy, Gig Workers Rising
- Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
- Lori Simmons, Chicago Rideshare Advocates
Session Description
This session will provide an overview of how app-based companies’ well-funded attempts to erode state and local employment and labor laws pose threats to basic worker rights across the country. It will lift up examples of how workers and allies are organizing to build new organizations with the power to protect or expand labor and employment rights. It will also acknowledge the challenge of state and local political fights characterized by huge imbalances of power and corporate efforts to divide allies against one another and/or to use cynical appeals to shared values such as diversity, flexibility, or benefits access (while eroding rights and creating second-class status for precarious low-wage workers who are disproportionately Black, Brown, and/or immigrants). Finally, it will present case studies of local policy options developed and implemented by and with organizing workers.