Leadership development is a very important component of our mission and our work. We are committed to empowering low-wage workers that have been purposely excluded from decision-making processes that most affect their lives. Our educational models aims to provide workers with a place to strategically think about ways to collectively identify and grapple with workplace justice issues and determine appropriate priorities and agendas for addressing workplace issues.

Workers Justice Project achieves this by:

• Developing Leadership through trainings that focus on analyzing the root cause of social disparity of our community and create alternative solution based on our necessities

• Building the skills through vocational trainings that incorporates popular education and community organizing skill building, with the aim to enhance leadership among low-wage Latino/a workers.

• Creating participatory and democratic structures where workers and those directly affected by workplace injustice are directly leading and making important campaign and organizational decisions.

Worker’s Justice Project believes that organizing is the most effective way to make positive change in the workplace. We are committed to organizing low-wage workers across race, gender and industry to strengthen the right to organize, to achieve socioeconomic justice and build a democratic, and diverse movement of low-wage workers.

Workers Justice Project achieves this by:

• Engaging low-wage workers in grassroots campaigns to achieve positive and collective action for systemic change
• Developing worker leadership and organizing skills to advocate for themselves and their community
• Creating grassroots economic alternatives as a respond to exploitative labor and unemployment

We strive to build a democratic, just and fair workplace for all people who have the right and the ability to pursue a dignified life for themselves and their families, regardless of their nationality, race, immigration or other status.

From this basis we fight for, among other things:

• Fair wages and equality in the workplace
• Dignity, security and the respect for the work we do
• Safe working conditions
• Stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would violate workers’ rights
• Right to organize and collectively bargain without fear of retaliation
• End the severe labor exploitation that marks our era

Worker’s Justice Project works with low-wage workers to go after unscrupulous employers through direct organizing and advocacy. Worker’s Justice Project engages affected workers in the wage recovering process from developing basic understanding from what the legal to direct organizing process entails. Our goal is to ensure workers are empowered to advocate for themselves through the unpaid wage recovery process.

WJP resolves hundreds of cases through the worker’s center or through street organizing at targeted site (such as Williamsburg, Bensonhurst and Jackson Heights) of low-wage workers who labor in construction, factory, cleaning, landscaping, childcare, and food service, all of whom were denied payment for their work, or not paid the legal minimum wage or overtime.

As the economic crisis continues to engulf the country, day laborers in New York City — already facing high levels of abuse and exclusion from protections that should be granted to all workers —continue to be among the hardest hit. Every day, workers gather on day laborers’ corners seeking a means to feed their families. Unfortunately, the majority find themselves returning home each day without finding work. Instead of decent jobs with fair pay, they are faced with unsafe work conditions and rampant wage theft.

As a direct response to the economic disparity that day laborers face and as alternative to fight labor exploitation, Worker’s Justice Project has developed an Economic Justice Initiative that combines workers rights organizing with social enterprise development to build a new grassroots economy from based on democracy, sustainability and cooperation. One of the pillars of this new economy is a worker-owned cooperative, a business that is owned and controlled by its workers.

The Economic Justice Initiative of Worker’s Justice Project is dedicated to the creation of sustainable jobs through the development, support and promotion of worker-owned cooperatives among low-wage immigrant workers.