Resilience Force (Summer 2027)

Remote, CA

Resilience Force is seeking a Peggy Browning Fellow to win justice for the largely Latinx immigrant workforce who clean up and rebuild communities after natural disasters like hurricanes. THe Fellow will conduct intake, help workers to develop and pursue legal claims, including, where necessary litigation in state or federal court. Typical legal violations in disaster zones are failure to pay minimum wage, failure to pay the agreed-upon wage, failure to pay overtime, health and safety violations including not providing protective equipment in the presence of typical disaster-related hazards such as mold, retaliation against any workplace complaints by calling police or immigration enforcement officials, and failure to compensate for workplace injuries. 

This workforce, the resilience force, is currently largely invisible and exploited. Climate disasters are growing in frequency and scale in the United States and after disasters, recovery becomes an economy of its own - a brutal and chaotic economy, where basic rules of safety, fairness and humanity are often suspended. Resilience Force develops and brings legal challenges against unscrupulous actors in disaster recovery zones, decreases suffering, raises standards and returns dollars to the pockets of resilience workers. See this New Yorker article, The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters for more details about resilience workers and Resilience Force: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/the-migrant-workers-who-follow-climate-disasters  

Resilience Force is and always has been a fully remote organization responding to unjust working conditions in natural disasters wherever they occur in the United States, and as such is experienced in team cohesion, organizational culture building, and supervision in a remote environment. This means the work will be fully remote. However, Peggy Browning Fellows based in Southern California or New Orleans will have some optional opportunities for in-person interaction. 

The Peggy Browning Fellow will work with Kerry O’Brien, a former PBF Conference speaker and co-founder of the DC Employment Justice Center and former Senior Counsel to the Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor under President Barack Obama. 

Fellows will conduct bilingual intake in Spanish and English with disaster recovery and reconstruction workers across the United States to document wages, hours, safety conditions, and potential workplace violations. Additionally, they will perform legal research on relevant statutes and case law, assist with ongoing litigation by preparing materials for depositions and drafting motions or briefs, develop Know Your Rights resources, and research state and federal policies to draft improvement papers.

Candidates must be proficient in Spanish to interview workers and send messages via phone, video call, WhatsApp, text, and email. Preferred qualifications include strong legal research and writing skills, high attention to detail, project ownership capabilities, and prior experience involving immigrant workers, employment law, impact cases, or social change movements

The total ten-week stipend for this fellowship will be $8,400. 

Address cover letter to:
Kerry O’Brien
Resilience Force
11901 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 581
Los Angeles, CA 90025-0025