Tag Archives: news

We’ve made it halfway to Montauk! Thank you so much to everyone who contributed and helped us raise $10k so far! This means so much to us at a time when the sources of our funding remain uncertain. We must keep fighting for workers’ rights, and every dollar donated will be doubled, ensuring we can continue defending workers and causing headaches for bad bosses!

The future we envision, free of injustice and where all workers are cared for, will likely look much different from the world we see today. To meet that future, we need creative and connective strategies that can strengthen and grow the spaces where it exists as a reality today. In this moment, when hope can feel scarce, these spaces—where our envisioned future can be lived—become beacons guiding us forward.

Artwork by Margaret Palmquist (IG: @swedishsummers)

Art has long served as a powerful tool for self-expression and storytelling, allowing the artist to communicate emotions, ideas, and struggles in ways that transcend our words. As many of us are left speechless by the injustices unfolding around us, we can turn to artful expression to hold space for our hope, joy, and courage.

This is why we created Unsung Voices, a traveling art exhibit originally designed to shed light on the experiences, struggles, and triumphs of workers who have been excluded from the unemployment safety net simply because of the work they do (ie. freelancing) or their classification (ie. cash earner). It’s not rocket science – all labor has value and all workers deserve the protection of a social safety net if they lose their job.

Since its inception, Unsung Voices has expanded to include art and advocacy created by and for a growing community of workers. Just as LIJWJ believes in democratizing our workplaces and society, we also believe in democratizing cultural expression. Through art, we offer a space where workers can share their experiences through self-expression and storytelling, linking individual experiences to a larger call for economic justice.

If you believe art can be used as a tool for social change and has the ability to move hearts and minds, grow public consciousness, shift perceptions and inspire people to act, then please consider making a donation to Long Island Jobs with Justice today.

We have one more week to get to Montauk. Help us put some gas in our tank!

In solidarity,

Long Island Jobs with Justice

P.S. – If you are an artist and would like to submit a piece to be shown at a future Unsung Voices exhibit, head to this link.

Help LIJWJ Make Sure Workers Are Heard in Albany!

Did you know only 9% of workers in the US are protected by a union? That means most workers face the risk of unfair treatment, injury and exploitation without any protection, because let’s face it, our labor enforcement agencies are falling short in holding bad employers responsible. That’s why it’s crucial for workers to organize and unite to push back against these injustices. We are halfway through our fundraiser but we still have $18,000 to raise to reach our goal. It’s no small feat but with your support and the power of community we know we can get there! Can we count on your support? Make a donation today and every dollar will be doubled!

Last week we shared two strategies we use to call out bad employers – our Workers’ Rights Board and our Bosses Steal (a lot) public education series. But while we love making good trouble with bad bosses, we also know we need to raise our voices in the halls of government.

If you follow us on social media or stay current with our calls to action, you’ll know about the Unemployment Bridge Program and how we’ve been fighting since 2020 to expand the unemployment safety net in New York so that it protects 750,000 workers who are currently excluded from receiving any unemployment compensation if they lose their job at no fault of their own. This includes 90,000 freelancers, cash-earners, immigrant workers and formerly incarcerated workers living on Long Island.

At Long Island Jobs with Justice we believe in building lasting change through worker-centered and worker-driven campaigns and movements and we nurture and support the development of worker leaders.

One worker leader we’re super proud to work with is freelance photographer Julie Flores! Julie has not only been a tireless and effective advocate, but she also has used her photography skills and talent to document the Unemployment Bridge Program campaign. In her zine – A Zine for a Cause – Julie weaves together her personal experience as an excluded worker with the larger movement of workers fighting for economic justice.

We are fiercely dedicated to centering and supporting workers like Julie to build our movement and win the changes workers – and all of us – so badly need. Your support could be the deciding factor in whether we can keep this important work going.Don’t miss out on this opportunity to double your impact and make a real difference in the lives of working people. We are so grateful for your support!

In Solidarity,

Long Island Jobs with Justice

Help LIJWJ Empower Workers in Their Workplaces!

One thing anyone reading this can probably agree on is that democracy is good, and also that we’re running a little short on it these days! Beyond voting for candidates and occasional ballot initiatives, people have no real direct say in how we are governed or what our society prioritizes.  

Peoples’ democratic input is even less present in their workplaces where the demands of the employer take total priority over employee needs. Organizing inside the workplace is crucial if workers are to have any direct say in their working conditions, and labor unions provide the structure for this collective power, offering workers a voice they wouldn’t have individually!

Artwork by Margaret Palmquist (IG: @swedishsummers)

At LIJWJ, we believe people ought to have democratic say over every aspect of their lives, including their workplaces, and we fight for that through organizing with labor partners and community supporters. Your support will help us continue to empower workers and strengthen efforts to grow democracy in the workplace!

One way we support growing democracy and worker power is through our Workers’ Rights Board, a community-based strategy that improves and enforces workers’ rights through collective pressure. The Board gives workers a public platform to share their struggles and hold employers accountable. One notable success was our work with Starbucks Workers United to support local Starbucks baristas, where we issued a Workers’ Rights Board report highlighting worker grievances, leading to the removal of an abusive manager who had been ignored by Starbucks corporate for over a year. The report sent a clear message: no PR can hide the company’s mistreatment of workers!

Read the report and see how we took action!

Over the past year, we’ve also stood strong with Long Island nurses fighting for safe staffing and wage parity, autoworkers at South Shore KIA securing their first union contract, custodial workers at Molloy University demanding fair wages, and healthcare workers working to protect Medicaid. LIJWJ has been at the forefront, mobilizing and organizing community support every step of the way.

We are inching closer to our goal and every little bit helps – donate today! With your support we can make sure LIJWJ has many more years of showing up for local workers and building even stronger collective power for future victories.  And remember, every dollar donated will be doubled for greater impact!

In solidarity,

Long Island Jobs with Justice

LIJWJ Matching Donation Opportunity!

We have some exciting news! National Jobs with Justice and an anonymous Long Island donor are offering a combined $20,000 in matching funds! This means if we’re able to raise $20,000 over the next month it will turn into $40,000!For a small (but mighty!) organization like us, that’s a significant contribution that can go a long way to support the ongoing fight for workers’ rights on Long Island. But, in order to take advantage of it, we need YOU to donate within the next month. If you’re ready to donate now, head to this link and help start us off strong.

Normally when we send out calls to action it’s to join workers on a picket line, call out an exploitative boss, lobby for a pro-worker bill, or support a community fight. But today, we’re asking for your support in a different way—by making a donation that will help us continue this crucial work and strengthen the fight for workers’ rights and justice on Long Island.

Forces are working overtime to erode workers’ rights, undermine unions, and strip away protections, all while favoring the wealthy and corporate elites over the needs of people. Masses of Long Islanders are struggling to afford the basic necessities of survival. Their numbers are growing and relief seems more distant with every passing day. Counter forces like Long Island Jobs with Justice are badly needed and by making a donation today you can be part of ensuring we stick around for the worker fights ahead!

These are uncertain times in many different ways, but together we can fight back against these attacks on working people! By staying grounded in our values of equity and justice – always putting people over profits – we can emerge from this struggle as a society that better reflects the fairness and dignity that every person deserves. Your contribution today will have double the impact, and that’s huge for us on Long Island.

We’ll be focusing on spreading the word on this match grant over the next few weeks and sharing more on LIJWJ’s beliefs and the work we do. But if you’re able and ready to support now please don’t wait to give!

Every little bit helps – and remember every dollar up to $20k will be matched for the next month. If you can give $20 it’ll turn into $40, $50 into $100, $100 into $200, and so on. Thank you for your support and we’ll be back with more soon!

In solidarity,

Long Island Jobs with Justice

Rally to Protect Medicaid with 1199 and more!

Happy New Year! From your friends at LIJWJ, we hope you had a happy, healthy, and restorative holiday season. Not least of all because 2025 is bound to hold many struggles, challenges, and calls to action from the LI workers’ movement. We’ll start our inaugural 2025 email with one of those calls!

Rallies to Protect Medicaid with 1199 SEIU!

The incoming presidential administration and its allies in congress are poised to continue assaulting what little social supports remain in the US. This includes funding for Medicaid, most of which is provided to states by the federal government. In New York, Medicaid provides healthcare access for about 7 million people (35% of NY’s 19.5 million people). This means if the federal government guts Medicaid over a third of New Yorkers will lose their coverage.

To show our local federal representatives that our communities support Medicaid, and are in dire need of any healthcare access available, 1199 SEIU is hosting two LI rallies tomorrow in Hauppauge and Patchogue.

If you are able please help start 2025 out strong and join 1199 in sending a strong message from the people of LI! Please let them know you’ll be there here!

2024 Holiday Season Recap

Since we last checked in there were a series of local labor actions that appropriately closed out 2024 as a year of solidarity on LI.

Starbucks

From Starbucks Workers United:

“Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol makes more in an HOUR than most baristas make in a YEAR. Its insulting that not only are annual raises lower this year than in previous years, but Starbucks offered our union NO immediate wages during contract bargaining. It’s unacceptable – we need fair wages, fair scheduling, and accessible benefits!

Union baristas went on the biggest Starbucks ULP strike in history from Dec. 20-24 – and until Starbucks bargains a fair contract with us, this is just the beginning.”

98% of unionized Starbucks workers voted for this strike in an inspiring show of determination and solidarity with one another. LI showed its solidarity too with community supporters and LIJWJ’s own Diane Cantave joining workers on the picket line in the frigid December weather.

To show your support on your phone or computer right now head here to sign the No Contract, No Coffee Pledge! And follow Starbucks Workers United on social media to get the latest updates direct from the source!

NYSNA

NYSNA nurses were joined by LIJWJ on a cold and rainy December 9 to tell Mt. Sinai South Nassau’s management to deliver a fair contract that respects nurses and patients!

From NYSNA: “Nurses at Mount Sinai South Nassau always put quality care for Long Island patients first. That’s why they’re working toward a fair union contract that guarantees there are always enough experienced nurses at the bedside. 

Management at Mount Sinai South Nassau has been pushing back on the nurses’ proposals every step of the way and claims they can’t “Find a Way” to deliver a fair contract on Long Island. Meanwhile, nurses at the hospital are stretched thin and concerned that patient care will suffer. NYSNA nurses have been fighting for almost a year to win a fair union contract that puts patients first.

Show your support for our local community nurses. Sign the petition to tell Mount Sinai executives to “Find a Way” to deliver a fair contract that respects nurses and patients!”

32BJ

From 32BJ: “Custodians working at Molloy University [went] on strike to protest Molloy’s failure to provide any additional dates for contract negotiations, despite repeated requests by the Union for additional dates. The last bargaining session took place before Thanksgiving.

In the past, the Union and Molloy University have always been able to reach fair Union agreements without a strike.

After a period of record inflation and with the high cost of living on Long Island, the Union’s priority in bargaining has been to raise wages and protect health and retirement benefits. Molloy currently pays significantly less than other nearby universities.”

Since the strike on December 10th Molloy has met with 32BJ to bargain, but remains stubborn on issues like wage increases. Given that, there is still an open call to action for community supporters to call the university administration at 516-323-3200 and tell them that Molloy custodians deserve fair wages and that one job should be enough!

Until next time, thank you for your support of LIJWJ and solidarity with our local workers.

Mental Health Walk Recap, Important Election Day Reminder, and Faith Conference!

Mental health??? In this economy?! It can be a challenge to find the nurturing your mind needs, but a supportive community can go a long way to help. One place you can count on finding a supporting community every fall is at HAFALI‘s annual Mental Health Walk. HAFALI hosted their latest walk last weekend in Baldwin with the theme of mental health in workplace.  LIJWJ and some other folks from the LI Fund Excluded Workers (FEW) Coalition joined to support.


Mental health is often stigmatized, which can make being open about the challenges of mental health difficult to do. This is probably most true in workplaces. Workers, especially immigrant workers, are treated like invisible commodities whose thoughts and feelings always take a back seat to productivity. For the Haitian community that HAFALI serves, xenophobia is applied as an additional layer of pressure as workers just try to do their jobs amongst the hateful rhetoric being spread about them.

In spite of all this, coming together for the mental health walk brought light and the bond of solidarity to all who attended, and will hopefully provide additional strength in the days ahead.

Vote YES on Prop 1 this Election Day!Working people are immeasurably and infinitely diverse. Each person possesses their own unique identity. Each identity is a complex cocktail of things like gender, ethnicity, religion, economic class, lived experience, ability, and a long list of other constituent parts that relate to and interact with each other.  

Alongside this diversity are universals that apply to every single person. These universals include the right to have control over who you are, and what’s best for your body. Caring and just societies by definition should include these rights as a fundamental pillar in their structure. Those who have authority over our current society like to project it as caring and just, yet certain protections over our identities and bodies are not enshrined as fundamental rights. A ballot measure you can vote on this Election Day, Prop 1, would help provide protections not available currently.

NYCLU is an excellent resource to understand the current holes relating to identity and bodily autonomy rights in NY’s constitution, and how Prop 1 can fix them. The protections included in Prop 1 strengthen the position of all workers, union and non-union, by further reducing the way bosses can legally discriminate against them.

Repairers of the Breach – LIJWJ Faith Conference in December!

This December we hope you’ll join the LIJWJ faith community, including co-sponsors the Poor Peoples’ Campaign, NYS Council of Churches, and Abraham’s Table, for an engaging and thought-provoking conference – “Repairers of the Breach”: How Faith and Community Partners Can Build a Just Long Island Economy. Repairers of the Breach is open to all clergy, congregants, and individuals from all faith traditions (and secular folks too!) interested in participating in discussions on the intersection of morality, economics, and movement building.

The workshop lineup is packed full of topics and questions that cut to the core of why LI is the way it is, and what needs to be done to undo the centuries of harm to marginalized groups that have taken place here. Each workshop will be facilitated with a panel of faith and community leaders immersed in their fields of expertise. They include:

  • Interfaith Perspectives on Principles of Economic Justice
  • Exploring Our Working-Class Roots
  • Congregational Properties – Knowing Our History, Shaping Our Future
  • Congregational Properties: Repurposing For The Common Good
  • What Can I Say? Preaching the Just Word
  • Changing the Narrative by Changing the Narrator
  • Voices of Worker Power
  • Congregations as Engines for Wealth Creation
  • Using My Faith Tradition to Envision a Just Long Island Economy
  • The Future We Believe In: Faith-based Advocacy and How We Can Do It
  • Our Moral Imperative – Act for Justice Now

Stay tuned for more info and a registration link! In the mean time SAVE THE DATE!!

In solidarity,

Long Island Jobs with Justice

LIJWJ End of Summer Round Up

Ramping Up to Pass the Unemployment Bridge Campaign in the 2024/25 NY Legislative Session

Another year has gone by with the NYS legislature failing to pass the Unemployment Bridge Program (UBP), and another year of excluded workers going without critical support they need when out of work. Cash workers, freelancers, and formerly incarcerated friends and neighbors are being failed by our current system. They work just as hard as traditional employees but are left out in the cold simply because of the way they are classified as a worker.

Fortunately, your local coalition pushing for UBP, the LI Fund Excluded Workers Coalition (FEW) has powerful worker leaders speaking up like freelance photographer Julie Flores. Julie was an honoree at LIJWJ’s recent awards dinner, and has been volunteering for the LI FEW Coalition since the 2022/23 legislative session. As a photographer Julie has documented the struggles of excluded workers like herself, and as an advocate has hit the ground from LI to Albany speaking about the injustices of our unemployment system.

Since the summer Julie has been interviewed by You’re Our Unity, has had some of her photography exhibited at the Heckscher Museum (and will continue to until 1/19/25!), and been featured as a worker voice for the National Employment Law Project (NELP). Julie and her work truly represents the resilience and drive of excluded workers who make some of the most essential parts of our economy run.

To keep up the fight for excluded workers, the LI FEW Coalition will be holding campaign launch events later in the fall. Stay tuned for announcements and please join us to get these workers a well deserved benefit!

Bosses Steal (a lot) Update – Chipotle

CEO musical chairs! Starbucks has gotten a new CEO, and if this guy’s record from his former company (Chipotle) is any guide, then things are not looking up for Starbucks’ corporate culture. Newsday recently ran a story on how Chipotle has paid back nearly $1 million in unpaid wages to current and former New York workers. Chipotle maintains that the wages went unpaid because of a computer system error, and that they have paid the workers on their own initiative. This may well be true, and it is good that the company is paying workers what they’re due, but we can’t help but notice how casually this is being handled.

According to our friends at 32BJ SEIU, Chipotle’s corporate culture is similar to other large chains like Starbucks, which makes Niccol a natural match for the company. It is discriminatory, lacking in transparency, lacking in accountability for managers, and has inadequate staffing policies, among other things. These conditions are very familiar to Starbucks workers who’ve been in the midst of collective bargaining with their corporate monster employer the last few months to resolve these same issues.

Chipotle and companies like it are given unequaled grace when they make mistakes. Workers on the other hand perform their labor in an authoritarian environment where simple mistakes can result in termination or other forms of discipline.

Chipotle took in nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2023, which makes the nearly $1 million returned to NY workers barely a blip on their balance sheet. But a worker who loses hours or their job because of simple mistakes can be financially devastated when not extended the same leeway Chipotle enjoys with state authorities.

To catch the latest updates on LI wage theft cases and everything else LIJWJ is up to, be sure to follow us on social media @lijwj on Instagram and on Facebook!

Care Can’t Wait

LIJWJ’s own Diane Cantave joined friends from the National Domestic Workers Alliance for a stop of the Care Can’t Wait bus tour last month. “Care Can’t Wait is a coalition of organizations, stakeholders and advocates committed to building a comprehensive, 21st century care infrastructure — that means robust investments to expand access to childcare, paid family and medical leave (PFML), and home- and community-based services (HCBS), and ensure good jobs for the care workforce.”

America has a huge deficit among the wealthiest nations in terms of the healthcare services supported by government. To bring badly needed services to the people and families that need them, Care Can’t Wait is fighting on the federal level for the investment of $400 billion in Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services, passage of the Child Care for Working Families Act, and passage of Paid Family and Medical Leave legislation.

We’re proud to support our friends in 1199 SEIU in the push for these badly needed policies!

We Are Long Island Organizing Hub Fall Event Schedule

The We Are Long Island (WALI) organizing hub is developing into and invaluable resource for organizers, activists and advocates in our region. WALI’s calendar is a smorgasbord of homegrown and locally organized events! Just in the next few weeks there are community fundraisers, trainings, and information sessions covering a wide range of issues impacting many of LI’s diverse communities.

Some of the public events on the WALI calendar, there’s a lot more for hub members!

Get more involved transforming LI into a place safe and welcoming for all and, just as importantly, connect with others looking and fighting to do the same. Join the hub to get full access or get to know WALI first and sign up for an open public event! Also be sure to follow them on Instagram!