Over the last decade, many EARN groups have experienced firsthand the limitations of traditional advocacy strategies when faced with political environments utterly resistant to positive policy change. These experiences have taught policy groups the necessity of building power outside the legislature—through close partnerships with grassroots groups—in order to enact change within it. This workshop will provide attendees with a range of lessons and practical tools for building effective partnerships with these groups in ways that are authentic and equitable, and build the power of directly affected people while capitalizing on the policy and research advantages EARN groups bring to the table.

In this workshop, we will discuss the general lack of knowledge among workers and the public about labor laws and workers’ rights, and the potential impact of strategic communications on employer compliance, worker power, and policymaking. We will provide nuts-and-bolts guidance on building relationships with reporters and creating an effective media strategy.

By every measure of economic well-being, people of color collectively, and African Americans in particular, are at a disadvantage relative to whites. These racial disparities are the legacy of federal, state, and local policy choices that systematically excluded or severely limited opportunities for communities of color to build economic security and power. In this workshop, we will consider the role of policy in alleviating or worsening racial inequality as we discuss both universal and racially targeted solutions to racial inequality, and contemplate whether policy can ever really be race-neutral.

Mass incarceration has severe economic impacts on individuals, families, and communities that are disproportionately experienced by persons of color due to structural racism. This session explores the extreme harms of incarceration as well as policies and campaign strategies to reduce the economic barriers faced by justice-involved individuals, including bail reform and expungement legislation. We will also discuss the importance of centering the experiences of communities of color and directly impacted individuals in advocacy efforts.

Across the nation, cities are experiencing an affordable housing crisis. In response, advocates and policymakers in several states and cities have adopted rent stabilization and renter protection measures. In 2019, Oregon passed the nation’s first statewide rent cap and eviction protection bill. In California, the cities of Inglewood and Sacramento passed new rent control laws and action is pending at the state level. New Jersey’s “just cause” law uses judicial power to protect renters against capricious or discriminatory evictions. In Georgia, new legislation grants stronger protection against retaliatory evictions when renters complain about unsafe or unhealthy conditions. These efforts can provide insight for other states looking for ways to protect renters and keep housing costs in check. Though it is not a panacea for fixing America’s housing affordability challenges, rent stabilization and renter protection measures can be part of a broader agenda to address the housing crisis. This workshop will present research findings on rent stabilization, policy recommendations for addressing the housing crisis, and most importantly, narratives from tenant organizers who can provide insight into the intersection of the housing crisis with race, income, educational attainment, and immigration status.

Employers are increasingly imposing boilerplate employment contracts on their workers, even low-wage hourly workers. These contracts may include terms such as shortened statutes of limitations that cut the time workers have to bring a legal claim, mandatory arbitration clauses that deny workers’ access to court, nondisparagement clauses that prevent workers from talking about things that happen at work, noncompetes that limit what jobs workers can take after they leave a job—the list goes on and on. This workshop will cover some common employment contract terms and the impacts of these terms on job workers’ mobility, workplace rights enforcement, and power. The workshop will also explore exciting new legislative, legal, and organizing initiatives to combat unfair employment contract terms.

In this workshop, attendees will explore the lasting effects of long-established and stubbornly persistent racial discrimination in the United States. Attendees will hear from researchers who have made use of “unconventional” data sources to document and measure the historical legacy and contemporary impact of racial discrimination on economic outcomes and civic engagement. Discussion topics include Confederate symbols, The Negro Motorist Green Books, and Native voting barriers. The goal of this workshop is to equip attendees with information and research they can reference in developing strategies for advancing a racial and economic justice agenda that takes account of the enduring legacy of racial discrimination.

Employers have long structured work arrangements outside the traditional employment relationship—for example, through subcontracting, temporary and staffing agencies, franchisee models, or independent contractor arrangements—in efforts to cut costs and shed the requirements of baseline labor laws. These work structures too often drive labor standards erosion, rising income and wealth inequality, and shift power away from workers and toward corporations. They are frequently employed in low-wage sectors into which people of color have long been shunted—domestic work, delivery, janitorial and logistics, to name a few—intensifying old patterns of occupational segregation and pay inequality. Workers and their advocates have struggled to fight this trend, but recently policy and organizing have started to move the needle, particularly in the area of worker classification as independent contractors. This panel will present some of these strategies for discussion and consideration.

EARN groups recognize that the climate crisis is happening and that we must rapidly transform our economy if we are to preserve life on this planet. This transition must be guided by principles of racial equity and economic justice that protect, support and empower working people and highly impacted communities. Yet many EARN groups may not know how they can engage on these issues. Moreover, some groups may be wary of engaging on a set of issues that is not popular with particular constituencies with whom they work, with large portions of the public in their state/region, or with the dominant political forces. In this workshop, we will discuss efforts underway at the state and local levels to fight the climate crisis while protecting workers and their communities; we will describe some of the research and policy work supporting these efforts; and we will discuss how climate advocates have been able to build strong and diverse partnerships and coalitions to support their campaigns.

Participants will learn about communications strategies, messaging tools, and research to support racial, economic, and gender justice narratives that are particularly relevant for the Southern states, including tools for storytelling to support grassroots leadership. There will be time reserved for a robust Q&A about messaging and communications research to support narratives that respect workers and ensure equitable outcomes for families trying to make ends meet, while also confronting low wages, erosion of labor standards, and tax subsidies for corporations.

EARN 101 is a foundational workshop for people who are new to the network, who are new to state and local policy analysis, or who are interested in getting more mileage out of EARN’s data tools and online resources. David Cooper, deputy director of EARN, and Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst, will provide an overview of the many data packages and online tools available to EARN groups, including EARN’s new State of Working X (SWX) online data tool. They will also introduce attendees to other good data sources for state and local analyses, discuss best practices and common pitfalls when working with certain types of data (such as wage data), and introduce attendees to some key concepts and common analytical tools in Excel. Bring your data questions and laptops.

A nationwide trend in state preemption is leaving local leaders with a diminished ability to respond to the needs of their communities by passing progressive policies. Participants will learn about sweeping state laws that intentionally block local efforts to address many worker and racial justice issues including minimum wage, health disparities and paid sick days, local hiring, and more. Panelists will also discuss how preemption of local lawmaking particularly impacts women and people of color, and what policy and grassroots organizations can do to ensure local decision-making for economic justice.

Child care is largely left to families to figure out on their own, a policy of neglect that has burdened women as parents, workers, and caregivers. These burdens have been especially heavy among women of color for whom race or immigration status factor into precarious economic circumstances that make staying out of the labor force less of an option. Fifty years after a national universal child care bill was vetoed, child care is emerging again as a key issue on the national stage. States have the opportunity to establish models that help show the way forward. But the child care landscape is fragmented and chaotic, the political and policy circumstances are different from state to state, and the needs and interests of working families and the care workforce have not been at the front and center of policy discussions. This workshop will start with a conversation between child care researchers in two very different contexts (Massachusetts and Kansas) to surface a range of key issues that must be tackled at the state level, and then open up for audience discussion.

Due to lackluster policy responses and a concerted political spin campaign to misdirect “blame,” the recovery from the Great Recession, after 11 years, has yet to reach many of the most marginalized communities in the U.S, and the human costs of massive job loss, insecurity, and economic financialization are still being felt. It is clear that previous state-level responses of budget austerity and cuts to public services and employment have kept some states from truly experiencing an economic recovery. It is more urgent than ever, with warning signs of a downturn on the horizon, to build consensus and power now—before crisis mode hits—around the policies we need to protect low- and middle-income people and ensure a robust and equitable recovery from the next recession.

As the old adage goes, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” But sunlight doesn’t only serve as a good disinfectant, it can also be a critical tool for building worker power. We know that keeping information secret from workers and the public allows employer abuses to grow undetected in the shadows. Secrecy also allows companies to become richer and more powerful without accountability.

In a push against workplace secrecy, states are increasingly using transparency as a policy tool to hold employers accountable and increase worker power by shifting control over information from employers to workers. For instance, Washington state and others are proposing and passing measures to require employers to disclose salary ranges to job applicants; seven states have banned nondisclosure agreements, and others are working to limit forced arbitration; and many localities, including Philadelphia, are working to ensure employees have advance notice of and a say in their work schedules. And as surveillance and data collection of workers becomes commonplace, working people are engaged in ensuring transparency about what is collected and how surveillance occurs.

Join us to explore the movement for workplace transparency blossoming across the country.

Communities around the country continue to support and fight for policies that welcome immigrants and ensure migrant workers and their family members are able to thrive despite pervasive xenophobic rhetoric, and policies and practices that discriminate and harm workers based on their immigration status. In this session, participants will hear about examples of recent state- and local-level campaigns, initiatives, and policies to support immigrant workers and economic justice. This includes action both in blue states, where more progress might be achievable, and in environments that are more hostile to immigrants. For example, in New York, new state government funding has helped refugee resettlement agencies continue doing vital work to integrate refugees into American society and the labor market. And in the South, where large Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raids are becoming more common, organizations have been cooperating to support impacted workers and families and preparing workplaces on how to respond. Other examples will be discussed and audience participation and contributions about experiences in their states will be encouraged.