Los Angeles Black Worker Center Project
Los Angeles, CA
The LA Black Worker Center (LA BWC) builds organized power among Black workers and the extended community to reverse disproportionate levels of unemployment and underemployment. The Center's mission is to increase access to quality careers, address employment discrimination, and improve conditions in industries that employ Black workers.
The Center builds authentic grassroots leadership among workers to challenge and undo public policies and corporate practices that promote inequality in the labor market and perpetuate inferior jobs in the Black community. The Center is the first in California and will give students a practical learning experience of the black workforce in Los Angeles.
The Peggy Browning Fellow will be on the front lines of fighting against employment discrimination faced by black workers in the hiring process and in the workkplace. The Los Angeles area currently lacks any significant legal capacity to assist lower-income workers who are affected by racial discrimination in employment. African-American workers are twice as likely to file employment discrimination claims but have half the chance of getting their cases heard. In partnership with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the UCLA Law School, and A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, the Black Worker Center will develop a legal clinic focused on employment rights and race discrimination.
The Peggy Browning Fellow will assist in staffing the LA BWC legal clinic by:
- Conducting interviews with workers and organizers to identify potential employment law, labor law and health and safety violations and assess workers' individual issues to determine the appropriate referral, if any;
- Conducting Know Your Rights presentations that address race discrimination issues, as well as other traditional employment rights violations such as wage and hour claims, unemployment benefits, worker's compensation, and discrimination based on former incarceration; and
- Assisting with filing administrative race discrimination complaints with state and federal agencies.
The Fellow will be the LA BWC liaison between community and university partners of the legal clinic. The Fellow will also assist in coordinating worker meetings with attorneys, tracking and charting worker cases.
Interested students should be comfortable working directly with workers in a community organizing context, conducting interviews and other research on potential claims, and helping attorneys assemble information needed to bring claims and cases. Successful candidates will have excellent verbal and written communication skills, be detail-oriented, energetic, and have a commitment to organizing low-wage and disadvantaged workers. Some experience working with community/union organizers and lawyers is preferred.
The total ten-week stipend for this fellowship will be $4,500.
Address cover letter to:
Lola Cuevas
UCLA Labor Center
675 Park View Street
Los Angeles, CA 90057
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