JLC Advisory Board Meeting Report: June 24, 2014

[gallery type="square" ids="396,397,398,399,400,401,402,403,404,405,406,407,408,409,410,411,412,413,414,415,416,417,418,419,420,421,422,423,424,425,426,427,428,429,430,431,432,433,434,435,436,437,438,439,440,441,442,443,444,445,446,447,448,449"]Attendees: Representative Ruth Balser, Representative Marjorie Decker, Sheila Decter, Mark Erlich, Mike Felsen, Abby Flam, Joanne Goldstein, Jim Green, Matt Hills, Phil Katz, Rabbi Allan Lehmann, Rabbi David Lerner, Aliza Levine, Bob Ross, Jerry Rubin, Rich Rogers, Dahlia Rudavsky, Enid Shapiro, Eugene Sheppard, Neil Silverston, Senator Dan Wolf, Susan Webber, and Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu.JLC Board members in attendance: Stephanie Ainbinder, Marya Axner, Dick Bauer, Dave Borrus, Maydad Cohen, Nicole Decter, Monica Halas, Corey Hope Leaffer, Rabbi Barbara Penzner, Jacob Schlitt, and Don Siegel. Also Volunteer Consultant to the Board Martin Abramowitz.Additionally Darlene Lombos of Community Labor United attended as a guest speaker.We were thrilled with our second annual Advisory Board meeting which took place June 24^th at the New England Carpenters Union Hall. As was true of last year’s event there were many bright and powerful people in the room. The approximately 40 people who attended were thoughtful, experienced, savvy leaders who work in the labor movement, are elected officials, or are Jewish community activists.Rabbi Barbara Penzner, Co-Chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee (NE JLC), shared with us the teaching that we are not required to complete the task, but we need to start the work. She thanked the Advisory Board for the thinking, sharing and support that help our organization set priorities and build working alliances with labor, government and academia.Rabbi Penzner also spoke about our accomplishments this year, highlighting passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, winning union representation for the workers of Le Meridien Hotel in Cambridge, and reaching a national agreement between UNITE HERE and Hyatt Hotels. She noted that, while this improved working conditions for Hyatt workers across the country, it did not address the situation of the workers of the Boston Hyatt Hotels, so the boycott continues here in Boston (see attached, “NE JLC Report of Activities July 2013-June 2014” for a full report of NE JLC accomplishments)Darlene Lombos of Community Labor United and Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu spoke about the problem of wage theft and the underground economy as well as plans to respond to these serious structural issues. Councilor Wu will be introducing an ordinance addressing wage theft to the Boston City Council this year.This presentation was the start of a larger conversation in which we asked people to think about and discuss areas which the NE JLC should focus on in the next year.We divided into groups and addressed these questions:

• In addressing wealth and income inequality, what issues should the NE JLC focus on in the coming year?
• How can we best support workers?

Following is a summary of what people said in small groups:

• Income inequality is a topic that people are currently interested in. People in our community need more education about income inequality and the forces that continue to cause inequality to grow. For example, people need to learn about wage theft and the underground economy, as these fuel the economic divide. Educating the Jewish community about these issues is a role the NE JLC can play. People need to understand how these issues affect their local communities. People in the suburbs may be affected differently and that needs to be taken into account in our outreach.

• We can appeal to the conscience of Jewish employers and their Jewish values. For example, we could meet with a group of Jewish developers.

• We should have a discussion about the impact of poverty:

o       Whose responsibility is poverty?

o       What is the impact of poverty and corresponding low wages?

• While we celebrate the passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (DWBR), we need to continue supporting domestic workers by helping to implement the bill. We can organize the Jewish community in the Boston area around implementation, as the Jewish community has done in New York.

• We should continue supporting hotel workers and other private sector workers. Increasing union density is key to increasing the effectiveness of unions.

• The adjunct professors campaign is a good issue for outreach to the Jewish community. There is a Jewish presence among adjuncts, and Jewish families with children in college will resonate with this campaign.

• People who try to promote social justice work in synagogues are often up against resistance to any action that might be “political.” Those people need support. The NE JLC community could help provide that support. It could help bring synagogues together on these worker issues. The NE JLC can play a role in Tzedek Reflections, which is a newly formed group of people from different synagogues, (but not representing different synagogues), who are organizing around a variety of social justice issues.

• With two Jewish candidates in the Governor’s race, we could host a candidates’ forum.

• We need to help people understand that worker issues are part of our core Jewish values. For example, to pay a living wage is a Jewish value.

• We should stay connected to the “Raise-Up” coalition and partner with synagogues on its goals.

All of these issues will be brought to the next meeting of the NEJLC Board as we begin to set priorities for the coming year.

NE JLC Advisory Board Meeting Report and Photos: June 13, 2013

[gallery ids="230,245,246,233,234,235,251,229,231,250,258,236,237,239,240,241,243,244,247,248,232"]JLC Advisory Board Meeting Report: June 13, 2013We were thrilled with our first Advisory Board meeting on June 13^th at the New England Regional Carpenters Hall. There were many powerful people in the room. The approximately 40 people who attended were thoughtful, intelligent, experienced, savvy leaders who have worked in the labor movement or in the Jewish community or both. They included elected officials, rabbis, union leaders, and Jewish community activists.At the meeting, Brian Lang, President of UNITE HERE Local 26, and Rabbi David Jaffe of Gann Academy spoke about their relationship with the New England Jewish Labor Committee and how their organizations had benefited from that relationship. Rabbi Barbara Penzner, Chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee’s (NE JLC) Rabbinic Advisory Council, spoke about all the significant work rabbis have done to help improve working conditions for thousands of workers in the Greater Boston region.People were enthusiastic to think about how we could better achieve our mission: to engage the Jewish community in issues affecting workers.  In other words, how do we help the Jewish community understand that it is in everyone’s self-interest to have a society where workers are treated with respect and are paid decently? How do we mobilize the Jewish community on behalf of workers? How do we use that mobilized energy to reach a broader community?We broke into four groups to discuss these questions. These groups focused outreach to the following groups:

• Jewish institutions
• Elected officials
• Cultural and non-affiliated Jews
• The broader community

Here are the summaries of reports from the groups:Jewish institutionsOne person posed this question, “What are the real points of connection in the Jewish community to labor?"  For example, GBIO’s nursing home campaign was something everyone in the Jewish community could relate to. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has also inspired people because they built a coalition between the most marginalized people in our society and consumers.  We can relate as consumers.People in the Jewish community do resonate with workplace justice, but it’s a matter of helping people connect to labor issues. For example, in New York, Jews For Economic and Racial Justice (JFREJ) led the Shalom Bayit (peace in the home) campaign around a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The Jewish community was central in getting that bill passed. The New England JLC is now working on a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in Boston. This issue connects the political with the personal. If someone is working for you in your own home, that is personal and people can relate to it.We need to acknowledge that labor issues are challenging in the Jewish community. We need incremental rather than global growth. Discrete issues, such as the Hyatt 100, or Ethical Contractor policies will help.The question was asked, “How do we make Jews aware of the realities of workers’ lives?”Here are some ideas of things we can host that will address that question:Education

• Education for rabbis on labor justice. For example, a group of rabbis can meet with workers and see their working conditions, similar to a Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) trip except here in Boston.

• Education in Jewish schools to get students to come together for an action, like Workman’s Circle does with its students.

• Rabbi Margie Klein edited a curriculum on social justice by Rabbi Jill Jacobs into two-week long units for use in Hebrew schools.  Jewish schools were eager for such a curriculum.

• Look at a broad array of Jewish organizations such as Hillel as places to engage.

• We need a long-term strategy. We should aim for deep transformation, like consciousness-raising, similar to the CIW model. In CIW people meet in groups and talk about their work situations or how they can make a difference. It is a model which takes a long time but builds real commitment.

• Using the term “economic justice” and not “union” will create a better reception.  It is important to approach others in the right way so that they will respond.

Cultural and non-affiliated JewsThis group thought that the best way to appeal to unaffiliated Jews—and Jews with only modest synagogue connections—is to focus on:1) Consciousness-raising about the issues affecting working people.2) Reminders of the underlying Jewish values that should be informing our stances on these issues.They also noted that the Jewish community—even the unaffiliated sectors—are not monolithic, and that different groups may require different methods and messages.The challenge is further complicated by the fact that the community may becoming more conservative economically and politically, and an appeal to labor union history and solidarity is not as likely to be effective.The group felt that the college-age population represents a potential fertile market.Elected officialsThere was a general discussion about how important it is for the NE JLC to have its members work with legislators to put pressure on businesses to do the right thing. We can use public officials to approach business leaders. We can use a business' desire to do business in a community as leverage to get them to comply with certain standards of behavior—there are costs to lack of high standards in the treatment of workers.The NE JLC should build relationships with elected officials when there isn’t a crisis, so that those relationships are in place for when a crisis occurs.The NE JLC could clearly express the historic connection between Judaism and support for the labor community.We need to have a better focus on specific issues and not spread ourselves too thin.Using the word “person” rather than worker sometimes helps when communicating to people about worker issues.The broader communityThis group recommended that the NE JLC could reach the larger community by hosting forums on issues having to do with workers. We could be the conscience of the Jewish community. The forums would be a way to get our name out there in the Jewish community.It would also be helpful to focus on a few issues and campaigns in depth rather than focus on many issues.Working with other community groups would help us reach groups of people beyond the Jewish community.