Strategic Organizing Center

Washington, DC

This is the 2024 fellowship description for this mentor organization. This position has been filled. 

Organizational Description
The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) is a dynamic coalition of North America’s most progressive labor unions: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the United Farm Workers (UFW), collectively representing over 3 million working people in the United States and Canada across a wide range of sectors, including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, public service, banking and the tech industry. SOC is a leading force for social, racial and economic justice in our country today. We engage in campaigns that confront corporations to make them take responsibility for business practices that harm workers and consumers in the U.S. and globally. Our ongoing campaigns to confront corporate power include assisting the historic organizing at Starbucks, the Fight for $15, winning raises for fast food and other low-wage workers across the country; Code-CWA, and partnering with CWA to support ground-breaking organizing by Alphabet tech workers.

Job Announcement

SOC is hiring law students for ten-week summer clerkships in its legal department. SOC’s legal department develops and executes legal strategies and tactics for comprehensive corporate reform campaigns in partnership with SOC’s strategic research and campaigns department and affiliate and allied unions. The SOC Investment Group advocates for sustainable deployment of worker capital in corporate investments. The legal department’s work extends beyond the practice of traditional labor law and worker representation. It includes strategic research; shareholder activism; partnering with allies outside the traditional labor movement; and regulatory and state- and federal-level advocacy in the areas of worker misclassification, antitrust, and safety and health.
 

Summer law clerks will perform legal research and writing on a variety of issues, including those arising under federal and state antitrust, civil rights, employment, and worker safety statutes, and local workplace regulations. Summer clerks may also assist with various legislative, regulatory and public policy matters. SOC will offer the summer clerks educational development within the organization, and the opportunity to attend and support any worker mobilizations, strikes, and picket lines that occur during the summer. The clerkship is open to 1Ls and 2Ls. Successful applicants will possess very good research, writing and oral communication skills and a demonstrated commitment to progressive movements, whether within or outside of the labor movement. Experience in investigative journalism, organizing, and/or strategic research is a plus.
 

SOC actively seeks diversity in its law clerk program, and especially encourages applicants from groups traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession and/or the mainstream labor movement.

Clerks will be paid $25/hour, plus expenses, for a ten-week clerkship. SOC anticipates that clerks will work out of the organization’s office in Washington, D.C.
 

Address cover letter to:

Marka Peterson
Legal Director and Associate General Counsel
Strategic Organizing Center
1900 L Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20036

www.changetowin.org