Fair Work Center & Working Washington

Seattle, WA

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

The Peggy Browning Fellow will help expand legal aid access for low-wage, immigrant, and contingent workers, as well as our organization’s efforts to ensure that workers know their rights under local, state, and federal law and that employers are held accountable to labor standards. Students who are fluent in English and a second language, particularly Spanish, are strongly preferred. The Fellow will be supervised by the Legal Director.

Fair Work Center and Working Washington joined forces in 2018, bringing together two organizations with strong track records and histories full of victories for workers. Together, we fight for new rights for working people and make those rights real through community-based education and legal services, all while building a powerful movement of working people. We are the national leader in organizing delivery workers in the gig economy, leading Instacart, DoorDash, and Amazon to change their tipping policies. We led the effort to expand overtime protections for Washington’s salaried workers and have trained hundreds of farmworkers in Eastern Washington about their rights at work. We continue to organize domestic workers to enforce Seattle’s groundbreaking Bill of Rights.

Our Legal Clinic works to ensure that workers know their rights under city, state, and federal law and that employers are held accountable to labor standards. We provide free individual consultations, pro se assistance, representation in administrative enforcement processes, and maintain an active litigation docket in state and federal court. Over the past five years we have served thousands of workers and have put over a million dollars back in workers’ pockets. In addition to direct representation our attorneys provide policy analysis, research, and enforcement strategy support to our campaigns, working closely with our organizing and education teams. We envision a society in which all workers have access to safe, dignified, and well-paying jobs.

The Peggy Browning Fellow will join a growing team at Fair Work Center dedicated to meeting the needs of low-wage, immigrant, and frontline workers. The Fellow will be integrated into all aspects of the Clinic’s work, including;

  1. Worker Intake and Counseling - After training and under the supervision of the Legal Director, the Fellow will meet with workers to assess their rights under state and federal labor, health and safety, and employment law.
     
  2. Individual Case Handling - The Fellow will be assigned to work on individual cases which the Clinic has agreed to take on for representation. These cases could involve demand letters and negotiation, administrative advocacy, or litigation.
     
  3. Policy Research - The Fair Work Center is actively exploring opportunities to strengthen the workplace protections available to low-wage workers, including on issues related to state health and safety law, right to minimum wage and overtime, and universal access to unemployment. The Fellow will have the opportunity to participate in active research projects on these and other workplace minimum standards.
     
  4. Development of Community Education Resources - The Fellow may have opportunities to work with our community educators and organizers to develop new educational resources for workers participating in know your rights and leadership trainings.
     
  5. Strategic Enforcement Campaigns - The Fellow may have the opportunity to participate in current campaigns to enforce workplace protections in our priority industries, depending on organizational needs at the time of the fellowship.

Location: Fair Work Center and Working Washington staff are currently working a hybrid work schedule, with some in-person work and some remote work.  The Peggy Browning Fellow will work from our Seattle or Yakima offices, in addition to some time spent remotely. .

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

Address cover letter to:

Jeremiah Miller, Legal Director
Fair Work Center
116 Warren Avenue N   Suite A
Seattle, WA 98109

www.fairworkcenter.org