AREAS OF WORK
Active members, low-wage workers, and community members at a Know Your Rights workshop on Labor Rights, organized by Working Family Solidarity.
DIRECT OUTREACH AND EDUCATION WITH WORKERS
WFS conducts one-on-one outreach with workers, as well as educational workshops and trainings with low-wage workers in the greater Chicago area, helping workers understand federal, state, and local laws directly regulating the workplace and hiring practices, including: wage and hour, health and safety, discrimination, sexual harassment, right to organize, immigration, criminal justice, and temporary labor. We support and encourage workers who wish to exercise their right to organize for mutual benefit at their workplaces, be it as direct-hire or as a staffing agency worker. We also mobilize low-wage workers to fight for the creation or more good jobs, which are accessible to all workers.
BUILDING RACIAL ALLIANCEs BETWEEN WORKERS OF DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS
WFS believes that it is critical to decrease racial tension between low-wage workers so that we see each other as natural allies, instead of competition for scarce resources. We hold Racial Unity dialogues as an integral part of our outreach and trainings with workers and their families, to create a unity that can help all of our communities reach economic stability.
Solidarity between urban and rural working families
WFS believes that there is a divide between urban and rural workers, based on a lack of understanding between workers in big cities and workers in rural areas and small towns. We see this mistrust in Illinois, between workers in Chicago and workers in smaller towns. WFS promotes solidarity and increased understanding between urban and rural workers, so that we can increase our support of each other's similar struggles to reach economic stability.
Organizing workers beyond the workplace: Housing
In addition to labor rights and creating good jobs, we also support our members and constituents, who are 90% African American and Latinx families, we also educate and organize families to attain housing stability. We cannot continue to fight for months and months to win victories at the workplace, only to see our hard-fought gains melt away when our rents are raised via the forces of gentrification. We hold workshops and teach-ins on housing issues such as resisting evictions, basic landlord-tenant laws in Chicago and in Cook County, how we can push for more affordable housing, and related issues.
(Above) Working Family Solidarity member Anita Z. talks at a Press Conference outside of an industrial laundry facility in southwest Chicago, denouncing illegally-low wages, lack of overtime pay, disrespectful treatment, and dangerous working conditions.