WORKERS' RIGHTS
Mission: Brandworkers is a non-profit organization bringing local food production workers together for good jobs and a sustainable food system. Brandworkers' Focus on the Food Chain program is a member-led campaign to create good local jobs and a sustainable food system in New York City. Focus on the Food Chain helps recent immigrant workers challenge and overcome sweatshop conditions in the food processing factories and distribution warehouses that supply the City's food retailers. Through grassroots organizing, advocacy, and legal actions, Focus members are winning workplace justice campaigns and building a powerful base of leaders to create a sustainable food system in New York. Focus on the Food Chain is carried out jointly with the Industrial Workers of the World (New York City).
Website: https://www.brandworkers.org/volunteer
Email: info@brandworkers.org
Phone: 646-568-5870
What volunteers do:
set up events
support events with cleanup/registration/food prep
provide childcare
workplace justice actions
research (mostly online)
data entry
make phone calls
filing, stuffing envelopes
help with social media
work with press/journalists
make videos, photos, signs, art, chants
interpret between Spanish and English
Mission: Community Voices Heard (CVH) is a member-led multi-racial organization, principally women of color and low-income families in New York State that builds power to secure social, economic and racial justice for all. We accomplish this through grassroots organizing, leadership development, policy changes, and creating new models of direct democracy. The NYC Chapter currently has committees, projects, and/ or hubs focusing on welfare/workforce; public housing; the Rockaways hub (organizing in public housing); participatory budgeting; and East Harlem neighborhood planning.
Website: https://www.cvhaction.org/get-involved
Phone: 212-860-6001
Email: michelle@cvhaction.org
What volunteers do:
flyering
door-knocking
community outreach
participate at CVH events
social media outreach
Borough: Manhattan
Mission: Damayan means “to help each other” in Filipino. Damayan is a nonprofit organization that empowers low-wage workers to fight for their labor, health, gender and immigrant rights. Established in 2002 by a group of Filipina domestic workers, we self-empower grassroots leaders to eliminate labor trafficking, fight labor fraud and wage theft, and to demand fair labor standards to achieve economic and social justice. We promote discussions on gender, race, class, globalization and forced migration to raise public awareness and support against the systemic causes of the exploitation of low wage workers, particularly migrant women domestic workers. Damayan also works to reunify families divided by migration.
Website: https://damayanmigrants.ourpowerbase.net/volunteer-intern-damayan-form
Phone: 212-564-6057
Email: contact@damayanmigrants.org
What volunteers do:
plan and execute events
support the Trafficking Visa Assistance Program (TVAP)
organize vulnerable communities by creating call lists of individuals to check on daily
community outreach
help plan rallies or actions
grassroots fundraising
design logos, brochures, posters, flyers, palm cards
create and post content to the website, MailChimp, social media
data entry/filing
IT & cybersecurity
Mission: Domestic Workers United [DWU] is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York, organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build a movement to end exploitation and oppression for all. DWU collaborates with other domestic worker organizations in New York, across the US and internationally to build the power of the domestic workforce as a whole. In 2003, DWU and the NY Domestic Workers Justice Coalition launched the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights campaign. After six and a half years of organizing, building a base of over 4000 workers and a broad coalition including employers, unions, clergy and various community organizations, we brought our power to bear with the passage of the nation’s first comprehensive legislation extending basic rights and protections to domestic workers. The New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights was signed into law on August 31, 2010. DWU is now leading the implementation of the historic law through outreach, education, and enforcement and also helping to support similar Bill of Rights campaigns across the country.As a membership-based organization, DWU is open to any domestic worker who is committed to our mission and goals to organize for power, respect, fair labor standards, and to build a movement for social change.
Website: https://www.domesticworkersunitednyc.org/get-involved
Email: DWUNewYork@gmail.com
Phone: 718-480-7511
What volunteers do:
support campaign work
office administration
phonebank
research
staff events
translate
Borough: Brooklyn
Mission: For 25 years, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) has pursued racial and economic justice in New York City by advancing systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in people’s everyday lives. We are inspired by Jewish tradition to fight for a sustainable world with an equitable distribution of economic and cultural resources and political power. The movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation will be led by those most directly targeted by oppression. We believe that Jews have a vital role to play in this movement. The future we hope for depends on Jews forging deep and lasting ties with our partners in struggle. As part of the NY Caring Majority Coalition, JFREJ organizes Jews around intersections of age, disability, class, gender, and race to build a more caring economy — one with healthcare for all, universal long-term care, dignity and support for family caregivers, and fair pay and respect for care workers. Our goal is a society that truly values care in everyday life, and an economy that treats care-providing work as an essential sector of a sustainable economy; a world where all of us have the care and support we need to live full, healthy lives in climate resilient communities.
Website: https://www.jfrej.org/campaigns/caring-majority
Phone: 212-647-8966 x11
Email: info@jfrej.org
What volunteers do:
after orientation, members work on specific issues, including divesting from police and prisons; ending NYPD violence; workforce rights for home healthcare workers; solidarity with immigrants; fighting anti-Semitism and white nationalism; Israel-Palestine as a local issue; and mobilzing the left Jewish vote
FYI:
special caucuses for Mizrahi Jews, Jews of Color, and poor and working-class Jews
can join both long-term campaigns and specific targeted actions
Mission: New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) is a community-based organization dedicated to building the power and advancing the rights of immigrant workers in New York. Current campaigns focus on curtailing wage theft through contractor licensing reform, protecting job seekers through employment agency reform, garnering municipal support for worker centers, and fighting for comprehensive and inclusive immigration reform. NICE operates a Community Job Center where workers collaboratively agree on rules and fair wages and connect with potential employers. The center serves as a safer alternative for workers who solicit employment at street corners and at employment agencies. At the center, NICE offers leadership and skills trainings, health and safety certification courses, Know-Your-Rights workshops, English classes, assistance to recover unpaid wages, and referrals to critical services.
Website: https://www.nynice.org/volunteer-opportunities
Volunteer signup form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvAOBDbKmT7fly11ejU_63Uk8ulG9eep93cLFguw0jYH2QKA/viewform
Phone: 718-205-8796
Email: info@nynice.org
What volunteers do:
work at community events (e.g., backpack giveaway, turkey distribution)
job readiness support (resume review, mock interviewing)
English practice
fundraise
write for the blog or social media
Borough: Queens
Mission: The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health uses training, education, and advocacy to improve health and safety conditions in our workplaces, our communities, and our environment. Founded in 1979 on the principle that workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths are preventable, NYCOSH works to extend and defend every person’s right to a safe and healthy workplace. Over the years, we have built coalitions of community, environmental, and labor organizations to win inspirational campaigns; trained over one hundred thousand workers in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley; successfully led advocacy efforts around the creation of New York State’s occupational health clinics and the Public Employees Safety and Health Act; conducted educational conferences for hundreds of workers on the disproportionate hazards on the job facing immigrant and low-wage workers, workers’ compensation, workplace violence, asbestos, office hazards, and ergonomics; and provided thousands of various technical assistance consultations on issues ranging from the aftermath of a wastewater treatment plant explosion and lab safety in schools. NYCOSH was at the forefront of disaster response and recovery after the World Trade Center disaster, as well as after Sandy, and continues to advocate for disaster preparedness through its work on infectious diseases–most recently, Ebola. Additionally, NYCOSH has been at the forefront of one of the most inspirational campaigns of low-wage immigrant women workers to hit New York City. The New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition continues to be a key campaign of NYCOSH as we seek to further impact nail salons throughout New York State and the country at large.
Website: http://nycosh.org/take-action/volunteer/
Email: nycosh@nycosh.org
Phone: 212-227-6440
What volunteers do:
research grassroots fundraising
help existing fundraising initiatives
host house parties
attend city council and community board meetings
help write reports on health and safety in NYC
bring new members to NYCOSH
Mission: There are more than 10,000 street vendors in New York City — hot dog vendors, flower vendors, book vendors, street artists, and many others. They are small businesspeople struggling to make ends meet. Most are immigrants and people of color. They work long hours under harsh conditions, asking for nothing more than a chance to sell their goods on the public sidewalk. Yet, in recent years, vendors have been victims of New York’s aggressive “quality of life” crackdown. They have been denied access to vending licenses. Many streets have been closed to them at the urging of powerful business groups. They receive $1,000 tickets for minor violations like vending too close to a crosswalk — more than any big businesses are required to pay for similar violations. The Street Vendor Project is a membership-based project with more than 1,800 active vendor members who are working together to create a vendors’ movement for permanent change. We reach out to vendors in the streets and storage garages and teach them about their legal rights and responsibilities. We hold meetings where we plan collective actions for getting our voices heard. We publish reports and file lawsuits to raise public awareness about vendors and the enormous contribution they make to our city. Finally, we help vendors grow their businesses by linking them with small business training and loans.
Website: https://www.streetvendor.org/volunteer
Email: svp@urbanjustice.org
Phone: 646-602-5679
What volunteers do:
plan meetings
shoot video
make phone calls
write legal briefs
provide office support
provide support for copwatch actions
virtual phonebanking
lead a virtual phonebank session
help flyer and/or table
join an art build
translate documents
graphic design
FYI:
training provided to lead phonebanks or marshal events