Organizing to Build Worker Power & Fight the Boss!
CNIWJ is composed of base-building organizations who have a shared analysis and practice of building up the leadership of directly impacted workers to empower them to lead shopfloor fights and directly confront the exploitative practices of their bosses. Together, each of our core member organizations have led the way in local and regional fights against wage theft, labor exploitation and unjust labor practices under the core tenet of sharpening the analysis of frontline workers so they can come together with their peers to directly counter and collectively pressure their bosses.
Notable Victories
Represented Industries
Governor Newsom as a representation of the fight on the shop floors
Governor Newsom, beyond being the head of the state government, has clear economic interests that align with those who oppress and exploit workers in the shopfloor. After all, he is a rancher and a business owner who has used his platform on the state and national level to continue to safeguard the interests of the megarich at the expense of frontline workers. Therefore, our fight to demand funding for immigrant worker communities, from a boss and governor like Newsom, is just an extension of the day-to-day struggles our worker leaders wage in their shop floors. We will continue to fight, push back and educate ourselves until the dignified funding and working conditions we demand are won for ALL workers in California.
Our fight for unemployment benefits for all is directly tied to the daily fights our leaders wage on the shopfloor. The exploitation workers in the periphery of the economy face is a mirror of the way government funding intentionally exploits immigrant workers only to exclude them from vital social services. Fighting for unemployment benefits for all is fighting for the dignity and wellbeing of excluded workers who forge dignified working conditions and counter wage exploitation through concerted organizing day in and day out across the state of California.
Political Education
Building up the leadership of our delegades and bolstering the analysis and skills of worker-leaders is a fundamental priority for our network. All of our political education material and facilitation is guided by a commitment to popular education, grounding ourselves in the daily experiences and cultural contexts that give shape and meaning to the reality of working class immigrant communities across the state of California. Political education sessions that happen on a regular basis allow us to deepen and sharpen the analysis of working-class organizers and leaders to ensure we understand the underlying power dynamics that inform the exploitation, abuse and dehumanization of immigrant workers at a societal level. We ground ourselves on a consistent commitment to ‘praxis’: the cycle of sharing theory, applying it in our organizing work and coming back to reflect on that application and critically engage those results to strengthen our Network and individual organizations.