GEL - Governance and Enforcement Lab
GEL was created to be a space where a small group of organizers and allied policy wonks can think together about how we can more effectively leverage labor policy and enforcement work at the local level to build worker power and organization. During GEL sessions, participants drill down on how things are working now and how we might keep refining our strategies to more powerfully utilize enforcement of these policies to create structures for organizing and bargaining and build worker and organizational power in order to dramatically improve job quality across low wage, predominantly BIPOC sectors.
The GEL sessions incorporate:
- “Deep dive” workshopping where one or two organizers discuss their campaigns and enforcement partnerships. They share lessons so far, their strategic puzzles, and their biggest questions.
- Brainstorming and planning around what meaningful partnerships with agencies actually could look like and accomplish.
- Identifying needs around research, legal strategy, and other support that could strengthen campaigns in ways that build worker power and organizational leverage, and jointly reach out to people and organizations that could provide that support.
GEL session schedule:
- 11/17/22 - The NY Healthy Nail Salon Coalition was founded in 2014 by Adhikaar and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). The coalition won the nation's first Nail Salon Workers' Bill of Rights in 2015, and successfully advocated to eliminated the tipped subminimum wage for nail salon workers in 2019. In this deep dive, we will dig into the current campaign to create a Nail Salon Standards Council in New York State, with a focus on how the campaign and the Council can used to build worker power and shift the dynamics of the industry.
- 9/15/22 - For this session we take a step back and look at the current moment in the labor movement, and discuss how co-enforcement and sectoral bargaining fit into the moment we are in. In particular, we look at the upswell in worker organizing and its limitations, and we examine whether and how local enforcement and policy structures can be used to build long-standing worker power.
- 6/8/22 – How organizers can use protected concerted activities rights under the NLRA to support workers outside of a traditional union organizing context, with a deep dive on protecting immigrant workers. This session features presentations from:
- Teresa Poor, Assistant Regional Director, Region 29 (Brooklyn), National Labor Relations Board
- Mori Rubin, Regional Director, Region 31 (Los Angeles), National Labor Relations Board
- Rayos Burciaga, Community Organizer, Somos
- Jessie Hahn, Senior Labor and Employment Policy Attorney, National Immigration Legal Center (NILC)
View the recording
Please note that this webinar contains
a mix of English and Spanish.
- 5/4/22 – Co-enforcement partnership between the Chinese Progressive Association and the other members of the Workers’ Rights Community Collaborative and the City of San Francisco's Office of Labor Standards Enforcement
- 3/2/22 – Co-enforcement in the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL)
- 2/2/22 – Co-enforcement partnerships between Arise Chicago and the City of Chicago and KIWA (Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance) and the City and County of Los Angeles
- 12/8/21 – Deep dive on LA Public Health Councils model
Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about GEL.
