Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa

Member empowerment. We recruited dozens of new members and conducted dozens of member-oriented workshops, with series including ESL classes, business basics, computer literacy, and food handling totaling hundreds of attendees.

Defending workers rights to proper payment and safe work. Our wage theft community organizers reclaimed over $65,000 in unpaid wages -- and more importantly, we created solutions through facilitating the leadership of the affected workers. Victims of wage theft learn powerful actions they can take when united with a worker center CWJ and allies to seek justice. One example this year was a 20-person in-person wage theft delegation to Jalapeño to escalate pressure in support of an employee whose paychecks bounced. We hosted several workshops, including a 50-attendee conference focusing on construction workplace issues and multiple focused on worker rights in meatpacking with over 700 total attendees. We won funding for a construction-sector community organizer and began a hiring process. We also produced a Meatpacking Safety Tool Kit in 5 languages to offer a centralized set of essential information for workers, and continued to support the Just Purchasing Consortium

Protecting and improving housing options for low-income residents. We collaborated with Grinnell College to survey two manufactured homes parks and produce a report guiding future support and organizing efforts, supported residents of these parks in advocating at the City Council of Iowa City and Johnson County Board of Supervisors, and facilitated consistent meetings of the Iowa Manufactured Homes Residents Network. We also organized a manufactured home resident Know Your Rights workshop with over 40 attendees, planned for advocacy in the 2024 legislative session, and persuaded a local property management company to continue accepting Section 8 housing vouchers for over 50 affected tenants to combat the consequences of Iowa SF252.