PRIORITY CAMPAIGNS
In 2010, as we worked to build a solid foundation for JwJSF’s long-term growth, we also began to play a role in a number of key labor and community campaigns including:
Hotel Workers Support: JwJSF supports the contract and organizing campaigns of San Francisco hotel workers and their union, Unite Here Local 2. Contracts expired in August 2009 for most of Local 2′s 9,000 members, and the workers and union are also engaged in intensive organizing drives at non-union hotels. JwJSF builds community and labor support for the hotel workers’ struggle including mobilizing turnout for major actions and pickets, co-leading and/or recruiting participants for community and faith leader delegations, and upholding the boycott of targeted hotels.
Progressive Revenue Coalition: JwJSF has played a central role in the formation and development of a revived community-labor coalition promoting progressive revenue policies to protect vital public services and good public sector jobs. The Progressive Revenue Coalition, which is anchored by JwJSF member unions and groups but also includes additional labor, community and political allies, succeeded in placing two progressive revenue measures on the November 2010 ballot (Props J & N) and coordinated voter education and mobilization efforts to pass the Real Estate Transfer Tax which will generate $30+ million per year in new revenue to protect City services and jobs. JwJSF and the Progressive Revenue Coalition also played a role in building community and political support for the labor movement and the successful campaign to defeat Prop B, also on the November 2010 ballot, which attacked local public sector workers’ pension and health care benefits.
Low-Wage Workers’ Bill of Rights: JwJSF has supported the creation of the San Francisco Progressive Workers Alliance (PWA), a network of community-based worker organizing and advocacy groups that are also member organizations of JwJSF. The PWA is focused on building a Low Wage Workers Bill of Rights Campaign, which calls for new policies at the local, state and national level to address the urgent problems of wage theft and joblessness in low-income communities of color.
Economic Crisis and Joblessness: JwJSF has worked to strengthen local organizing and movement building around the economic crisis, as part of National JwJ’s Campaign for Full and Fair Employment. JwJSF organized a community-labor delegation, including two labor leaders and two PWA representatives, to meet with Speaker Pelosi’s office about the jobs crisis and the need for additional job creation legislation. In September, JwJSF coordinated a well-attended Jobs Emergency action at Senator Feinstein’s office as part of the JwJ-initiated National Day of Action to Declare a Jobs Emergency that included actions in over 100 other cities. PWA groups and JwJSF unions were a core base of the Jobs Emergency action that received coverage by local and national media.
California Pacific Medical Center: JwJSF supports community organizations and labor unions in their coordinated campaign with the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and its $2.3 billion hospital development plan. Working in partnership with the Good Neighbor Coalition and the Coalition for Health Planning San Francisco, JwJSF helps build the grassroots movement of workers and residents to demand that CPMC constructively address a comprehensive set concerns including union representation, job transfer rights and a fair contract for nurses at all CPMC facilities, preserve and rebuild St. Lukes Hospital as a full service health care facility for residents of Southeast San Francisco, provide significant community benefits for impacted residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood, end CPMC’s discriminatory policy against hiring of Filipino nurses and comply with the City’s affordable housing funding requirements. JwJSF held its first Community and Workers Rights Board (CWRB) hearing on CPMC labor and community issues December 2010. Over 150 people attended the hearing, held at City Hall, to hear testimony from health care workers and residents and responses from a panel of community, faith and political leaders including Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.
COMMUNITY AND WORKER RIGHTS BOARD
The Community and Workers’ Rights Board is a public forum where community members and workers can bring complaints against institutions for violating their human and legal rights. The Board is particularly concerned with protecting the rights of low-income community members and low-wage workers, who are often women, immigrants, young people, elderly and people of color as they strive for justice in their communities and workplaces.
The Board is composed of a broad cross section of community, faith and political leaders who intervene with institutions and the public to help resolve situations that threaten community and workers’ rights. The Board believes that safe, living wage jobs, where workers are not discriminated against for speaking up for their rights are the backbone of any healthy community.
To accomplish its goals, the Community and Workers’ Rights Board will attempt to resolve issues in a variety of ways. Community and Workers’ Rights Board activities may include:
- Holding public hearings or press conferences to expose injustices to public scrutiny.
- Meeting with institutions that have been accused of violating community or workers’ rights or resisting efforts of community members or workers to have a voice in the workplace or in decisions that affect them.
- Supporting and strengthening the democratic rights of working people and their communities, including the right to organize, through community education.
- Establishing community standards about fairness in the community and workplace and corporate responsibility.
