Working Hands Legal Clinic
Chicago, IL
Working Hands Legal Clinic (WHLC) is a joint project of three Chicago area community-based workers’ centers, including the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (CWC) and the Latino Union (LU). These workers’ centers provide assistance to low-wage workers in Illinois. CWC focuses on assisting day laborers in the temporary staffing industry. Meanwhile, LU primarily assists street-corner day laborers and has recently begun assistingdomestic workrs as well. Together WHLC and these organizations have worked to pass state legislation providing some of the country’s strongest protections for day laborers.
For example, in 2006 WHLC helped draft the Illinois Day and Temporary Labor Services Act, which CWC and other worker centers in the area worked to pass. Most recently, WHLC collaborated with the Just Pay For All coalition, composed of CWC, LU and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU), in amending the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act to arm the law with new effective enforcement and deterrent mechanisms. WHLC has also been actively involved in drafting amendments to other laws affecting low-wage immigrant workers such as the Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, protecting workrs from abusing use of E-verify.
Like the workers’ centers, WHLC operates on the principle that social change occurs through leadership development in the communities most affected by workplace abuses. Since its founding in 2004, WHLC has helped to provide workplace rights training to hundreds of leaders and, working with these leaders, has assisted day laborers in recovering over $13 million in owed wages. WHLC also works in partnership with the Mexican Consulate office in Chicago and its Mobile Consulate program to provide information and training to Mexican nationals in the defense of their rights in the workplace, in the event of workplace raids or in the event of terminations based on abuse of employment verification systems.
The Peggy Browning Fund Summer Fellow will work under the supervision of WHLC Director in the following areas:
- Develop workplace rights curriculum and materials for training of workers’ center leaders;
- Assist in conducting trainings of workers’ center leaders;
- Assist in conducting intake interviews with day laborers and identifying legal issues;
- Participate in active litigation drafting complaints, motions and conducting research;
- Work with workers’ centers in developing worker-led strategies to attack workplace abuses.
The total ten-week stipend for this fellowship will be $4,500.
In addition to the basic application requirements (cover letter, application form, essays, resume) applicants for this fellowship must also include a legal writing sample.
Address cover letter to:
Alvar Ayala, Executive Director
Working Hands Legal Clinic
77 W. Washington Street, Suite 1402
Chicago, Illinois 60602
Tel: 312-795-9115
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