Get to Know AFL-CIO’s Allied Groups: Jobs with Justice
This is the next post in our series that will take a deeper look at each of our allied groups. The series will run weekly until we’ve covered each of the departments. Next up is Jobs With Justice (JWJ).
Name of Organization: Jobs With Justice
Mission: Jobs With Justice believes that expanding the ability of workers to collectively bargain is one of the most important ways to make good on the promise of democracy. For nearly 40 years, Jobs With Justice has lived these values by bringing together labor, community, student and faith voices at the national and local levels to win improvements in people’s lives, shape public discourse on workers’ rights and the economy, and build a multiracial and multigendered united front of workers pushing for working people’s shared interests against exploitation and corporate greed. JWJ and its network of 28 local coalitions stand shoulder to shoulder with workers in all wage sectors, centering the fight against White supremacy, systemic racism and patriarchy to expand economic democracy. Jobs With Justice believes that in order to build a functional and healthy democracy, working people must be able to practice governance and democratic decision-making in all aspects of their lives, including finances, housing, education and more.
Current Leadership: Erica Smiley serves as executive director. A longtime organizer and movement leader, Smiley has been spearheading strategic organizing and policy interventions for Jobs With Justice for nearly 15 years. Prior to taking up her current position with the organization, Smiley served as organizing director for JWJ, developing campaigns that resulted in transformative changes to how working people organize and are civically engaged at their workplaces and in their communities. During her tenure at JWJ, Smiley has served in numerous leadership capacities, including as campaigns director and as senior field organizer for the southern region. With Sarita Gupta, she co-authored “The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century,” a book about collective bargaining and democracy released in April 2022. Prior to joining Jobs With Justice, Smiley organized with community groups and unions such as the Tenants and Workers Support Committee (now Tenants and Workers United) in Virginia and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 500 in Baltimore. Her career in social and economic justice began in the reproductive justice field; she served as national field director for Choice USA (now URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity), where she received the Young Women of Achievement Award in 2004.
Mackenzie Baris serves as deputy director of program and base building. Candace Johnson serves as deputy director for organizational strength.
Allied Unions: AFL-CIO; AFGE; AFSCME; AFT; American Postal Workers Union; Association of Flight Attendants-CWA; Communications Workers of America; Electrical Workers; International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers; Ironworkers; Laborers; National Education Association; North America’s Building Trades Unions; SEIU; UAW; UNITE HERE; United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America; United Food and Commercial Workers; and United Steelworkers.
History: Since its founding in 1987, Jobs With Justice has been winning campaigns that build power for working people; advancing a sustainable and powerful network of grassroots coalitions; supporting the growth and leadership of local leaders and activists; and developing strategic alliances nationally and globally that strengthen the movement for workers’ rights, economic justice and democracy.
On July 29, 1987, more than 11,000 individuals participated in the first Jobs With Justice convening in Miami and together recited the JWJ pledge. Pledge takers commit to showing up at least five times a year for someone else’s fight so that together working people can challenge corporate greed from all angles; protect the vital public services that communities need and the jobs of the people who deliver those services; defend institutions that work to improve working conditions, wages and dignified retirement; protect immigrant workers from unjust workplace raids and inhumane deportation; and support workers demanding jobs with justice, the right to organize and the freedom to collectively bargain for fair contracts.
Throughout its history, Jobs With Justice has been a strategic hub for the labor movement by bridging the gap between traditional labor unions and new worker organizations, and creating coalitions of diverse partners who understand the interconnectedness of worker issues to broader social justice movements such as health care, public education, immigrants’ rights, globalization and trade issues.
Jobs With Justice has launched and co-anchored national campaigns such as Caring Across Generations; Change Walmart, Change the Economy; United Workers Congress; Debt-Free Future; Protecting Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation; and Always Essential. Across the country, JWJ has anchored successful minimum wage, wage theft, paid leave and “ban the box” policy victories in states and local communities.
In 2020, Jobs With Justice launched the Advancing Black Strategists Initiative with a vision to create a cohort of Black economic justice- and labor-focused strategists committed to leading, developing and advancing policies and campaigns that support the collective power-building of working people, particularly in the South. In 2024, JWJ partnered with the W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University to co-found the Labor Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists, the first-ever labor institute at a historically Black college or university in the U.S. South.
Current Campaigns/Policy Agenda: Jobs With Justice is powered by a grassroots network of local affiliates and 350,000 committed supporters. JWJ projects include the Labor Research and Action Network, the Advancing Black Strategists Initiative, and the Worker Solidarity Fund. JWJ provides leadership development and training for its affiliates and partners and is building Strike Ready Committees to support workers taking bold action together. Jobs With Justice also develops and advances worker-first policies toward a 21st-century reconstruction for multiracial democracy. Current campaigns include fighting for pregnancy justice at Amazon by applying public pressure for accountability for Amazon’s cruel and systemic abuse of pregnant and postpartum workers who have been denied accommodations and have faced harassment, miscarriages and firings, violating federal law and putting workers’ health, livelihoods and lives at risk; defending immigrant workers and holding corporations that enable Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountable; and powering the green transition by advancing a union-led, community-rooted climate transition by empowering workers, aligning capital, and enforcing high road labor standards in clean energy and decarbonization projects.
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