National Employment Law Project

Washington, DC

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

About NELP:

Founded in 1969, the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a leading advocacy organization with the mission to build a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Together with local, state, and national partners, NELP advances its mission through transformative legal and policy solutions, research, capacity building, and communications. Our victories over the last decade have impacted the lives of an estimated 100 million workers and their families. We lead and collaborate in fights for higher pay and just benefits, secure and safe jobs, and support at each stage in a worker’s life. We build worker power and we challenge rules that allow corporate harm and undue power. We are transforming precarious work by raising the floor so that every job is a good job and everyone who wants a job can have one. Together over the next decade, we will build Black, immigrant worker power and advance transformative solutions to achieve racial and economic justice. For more information, read our annual reports and explore our website: www.nelp.org

NELP has a team of 45 staff people based across offices in New York City, Washington D.C., and Berkeley, CA, with a 12-person Board of Directors, an annual budget of $14M, and hundreds of partners in the field with whom we work to further our mission.

The Fellowship:

With a staff of lawyers, researchers, and policy experts, NELP works in close partnership with lawyers, grassroots organizing groups, and reformers to test new policy models in the states and cities and translate them to the federal level, and to enforce long-fought legal rights and protections, in order to respond to the key problems of the U.S. labor market in the twenty‐first century. Our work includes:

Developing new strategies to improve and ensure enforcement of basic workplace rights in order to combat the growing number of Black and immigrant workers who are not paid the minimum wage or overtime, who endure unsafe workplaces, and who face retaliation when trying to organize;
Researching and developing policies to address the rise of outsourcing, the “gig economy,” and contingent work structures (“the fissured economy”) to ensure fair wages and job quality;
Researching and developing policies to address the needs of formerly-incarcerated individuals seeking access to good jobs;
Developing policies and providing campaign support to raise labor standards at the federal, state, and local levels, with a particular focus on supporting ongoing worker campaigns for $15 an hour and the right to unionize; fighting back against rollbacks at the federal level; and eliminating loopholes and waiver of rights that exclude immigrants, people of color, and contingent and temporary workers from core minimum wage protections.
This past summer our interns worked on issues including labor and employment law coverage for undocumented workers, access to health and safety protections for worker centers and their members, labor protections for incarcerated workers, and assisted in researching and mapping laws for contracted and “gig” workers.

The Peggy Browning Fellow will assist NELP attorneys in all aspects of this work, including:

Providing legal, policy and strategic assistance for campaigns, including drafting legislation, legal research and analyses, and policy briefs;
Strategic participation in litigation related to wage and hour and other labor standards issues, including drafting amicus briefs and preparing legal research memos;
Drafting reports, op-eds, and community educational materials and engaging in strategic communications.

The total ten-week stipend for this fellowship will be $7,000.

NELP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and an equal opportunity employer, fair chance, affirmative action employer, committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. All qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military status, prior record of arrest or conviction, citizenship status, current employment status, or caregiver status.

To Apply:

Applicants should submit the Peggy Browning basic application requirements. Students are encouraged to apply as early as possible.

Cathy Ruckelshaus
Legal Director & General Counsel
National Employment Law Project
90 Broad Street, Suite 1100
New York, NY 10004

www.nelp.org