We’re organizing with working people and communities to use our collective power to create good jobs, counter corporate greed so everyone can make a living
Working people in Silicon Valley generate tremendous wealth. But to meet Wall Street’s insatiable demand for more, investors and executives have rigged the rules of our economy — concentrating wealth in the hands of a few and excluding hard working people from sharing the prosperity they helped create. The majority of families in the region struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, often working more than one job so they can care for their families.
We’re changing those rules so we all get a fair return on our work, regardless of our occupation: we’re raising the floor so jobs pay enough to cover the basics, expanding the middle with new models for creating family-supporting careers, and opening the door to good jobs for people that have been excluded from opportunity.
Expanding high-road construction careers
With our Construction Careers partners, we’re setting standards to ensure the construction industry creates good jobs and opportunities for our diverse local communities.
Construction is the second-fastest growing industry in Silicon Valley (just behind the tech sector), with more than 13,000 projected job openings over the next decade.
The construction trades can be a pathway to a skilled career and a brighter future. Registered Apprentices in the building trades get paid to learn on the job, instead of spending thousands on a college degree. High-road construction companies compete on quality by paying family-supporting wages and investing in training and safety.
However, some developers and low-road contractors instead cut costs and pad their profits by paying such low wages that people cannot afford to live in the communities they’re building.
Low-road contractors particularly exploit people of color. They pay Latino and black people 38% less than white workers — costing Latino workers and their families $387 million each year. Exploitive contractors also dodge responsibility for training the next generation of construction workers, leaving California without enough apprenticeship slots to meet future demand for a skilled workforce.
We are committed to expanding pathways into the construction trades for under-represented communities through the Trades Orientation Program (TOP), a one-year apprenticeship readiness program to help people get started in a high-road construction career. Learn more about TOP here.
Rights at work
We’re advocating for policies and programs that uplift workers’ rights, prevent wage theft and workplace abuses, and support workers’ voices.
Some low-road corporations not only pay low wages and cut hours, but deliberately break the law to push down costs. Wage theft comes in many forms: paying less than the minimum wage, making people work off the clock, not paying overtime, classifying employees as independent contractors, the list goes on.
Wage theft costs the average low-wage worker in the US over $2,600 each year, or 15% of their earnings. Predatory employers target the most vulnerable in our society — like immigrants and human trafficking victims — knowing that these people usually don’t have the means to fight back.
That’s why we’re developing a new community-based model to raise the floor, fight workplace abuse and ensure we’re all paid for the work we do.
We drove a groundbreaking coordinated campaign to raise the minimum wage in 8 Silicon Valley cities, ensuring 219,000 working people are paid a bit more to help meet rising rents. And together with labor and community partners, we won the first-in-the-nation Opportunity to Work ordinance that provides people with part-time jobs a pathway to the work hours they need to put food on the table for their families. When COVID-19 hit, we worked to make San José the first city in California to provide emergency paid sick leave for all workers.
Today, we are building on these victories by advocating for policies and programs such as the Fair Workplace Collaborative(FWC), that uplift workers’ rights, prevent wage theft and workplace abuses, and support workers’ voices.
Collectively shifting towards an equitable regional economy
Through partnership, collaboration, and engaging workers and residents at the grassroots, we are collectively creating a new approach to economic development planning in the Bay Area, centered around the values of equity, high-road employment, sustainability and climate resilience, and shaped by workers and impacted community members themselves.
The nine-county San Francisco Bay Area is one of the nation’s largest and most diverse metro regions, home to 7.8 million people from the urban core to rural farming communities. Sixty-one percent of Bay Area residents are people of color and 31% are first-generation immigrants. But despite its prosperity, the Bay Area is one of the ten most unequal regions in the United States.
In collaboration with ReWork the Bay and Jobs with Justice SF, we developed a broad framework aimed at shifting the way that regional stakeholders approach the “future of work”.
The final report, Power is at the Root, lifts up five recommendations:
o Center Workers as Decision-Makers
o Forge a Racially Just Future
o Build Collective Power
o Focus on the Changes Most Affecting People’s Lives
o Shape Technology to Serve People
Now, we are embarking on an ambitious collaborative project to build a Bay Area regional table to re-envision regional economic development planning, centered around the values of equity, high-road employment, sustainability and climate resilience, and shaped by workers and impacted community/members themselves. This work is seeded by California’s new Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF) initiative. Learn more here.
Trades Orientation Program
With the Trades Orientation Program(TOP), we’re giving community members pathways to apprenticeships and a rewarding career in the high demand construction trades.
Fair Workplace Collaborative
The Fair Workplace Collaborative (FWC) educates and empowers workers to stand up for their rights, while informing small businesses about their roles and responsibilities in creating safer workplaces.
Equitable Regional Development
Through partnership, collaboration, and engaging workers and residents at the grassroots, we are collectively creating a new approach to economic development planning in the Bay Area, centered around the values of equity, high-road employment, sustainability and climate resilience, and shaped by workers and impacted community members themselves.
