Raise Up Massachusetts

Progress on Paid Family & Medical Leave, Fair Share Amendment

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Last Tuesday, June 13, the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development heard testimony about the paid family and medical leave bill supported by the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition. The next day, in a special Constitutional Convention, State Senators and Representatives debated and voted on the merits of putting the Fair Share Amendment on the 2018 ballot.

Paid Family and Medical Leave

Raise Up Massachusetts had a powerful presence at the paid family and medical leave hearing; we demonstrated broad support for this legislation. Hundreds of coalition members packed the hearing room and over 60 people shared their personal stories of needing to take leave from work to welcome a new child, to take care of their health, or to aid a sick family member.
We told our legislature: nobody should have to choose between the job they need and caring for themselves or loved ones.
During the hearing, parents spoke passionately about the need for this legislation. Low-wage workers shared how they were forced to return to work right after a medical crisis and families shared how they often needed to forgo a critical source of income to care for family members struggling with illness or injury. Small business owners told the legislators that providing paid leave is the right thing to do, and countered the narrative that it's bad for business. Doctors testified to the importance of family support for sick children's health outcomes.
Click here to read our tweets of highlights of the hearing. Follow us on Twitter
We must keep these stories on the minds of our legislators and make
Paid Family and Medical Leave a priority in the state house.

Fair Share Amendment

At the Constitutional Convention on Wednesday, the Massachusetts Legislature advanced the Fair Share Amendment to the 2018 ballot!
In 2015, we collected 157,000 signatures from voters like you to qualify the Fair Share Amendment for the 2018 ballot. In 2016, we won the first legislative vote necessary to advance the amendment. Last week, an overwhelming majority of legislators voted to advance the amendment to the ballot by a margin of 154 to 55. Now, the voters get to decide if Massachusetts will invest in transportation and public education - we think the answer will be a resounding yes!
Please email us if you want to get involved in the campaign to win paid family and medical leave, the Fight for $15, and the Fair Share Amendment. We look forward to your engagement.

JLC Summer Hearings Schedule

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Our four key legislative priorities this year are the Safe Communities Act, paid family and medical leave, the $15/hour minimum wage and elimination of the tipped sub-minimum wage, the Fair Share Amendment. An important step in passing these laws is the hearing process.It's critical that advocates for these progressive pieces of legislation show up in force to demonstrate the widespread community support during the hearings and the Constitutional Convention. We hope you will join us.We encourage you to attend these lobby and hearing sessions for any portion of time you can. The length of each hearing will vary and is difficult to predict.If you have personal experience with topics covered by these bills and would like to share you experience publicly through a written statement or testimony, please contact Jenna at jenna.nejlc@gmail.com. Please also contact Jenna with any further questions about timing or logistics.


Safe Communities Act Hearing

When: Friday, June 9 | 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House Rooms A1 & A2


Paid Family and Medical Leave Hearing

When: Tuesday, June 13 | Briefing & Lobbying 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. | Hearing 1:00-4:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House | Briefing in Room 327 | Hearing in Room B2We will meet for a briefing and designated time to lobby your elected officials before the hearing time. We strongly encourage you to attend the pre-hearing program and to lobby your officials.


Fight for $15/Minimum Wage Hearing

When: Tuesday, September 19 | Briefing & Lobbying 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. | Hearing 1:00-4:00 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House | Briefing Room TBA | Hearing in Gardner AuditoriumWe will meet for a briefing and designated time to lobby your elected officials before the hearing time. We strongly encourage you to attend the pre-hearing program and to lobby your officials.


Fair Share Amendment Constitutional Convention

When: Wednesday, June 14 | 12:30 p.m.Where: Massachusetts State House, House Chamber  

Four Questions About Labor Rights

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On March 23, we celebrated the 17th Annual Labor Seder, at which we celebrated the Passover holiday and the struggles of workers, drawing parallels between the liberation of Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt and current struggles of employees trying to win equitable pay and better working conditions.JewishBoston.com invited us to write four questions about labor rights as part of their collection of questions written by Jewish social justice organizations for the Passover Seder.We encourage you to read through our questions (below), to incorporate them into your Seder this year, and to use them to facilitate conversations with friends and family about workers' rights and the values of our Jewish traditions this Pesach.If you'd like to use our haggadah at your Seder, view and download a copy here.


Four Questions About Labor Rights

Like slaves, many workers have no say in their working conditions.Like slaves, workers give up their dignity to serve the bottom line. Passover is an ideal time to engage in the struggle for workers' rights and economic justice. We can look at what is going on with people who work in all kinds of jobs, including our own. This holiday calls us to become involved in advancing the dignity of workers.

Judaism values work and workers. Go around the table: What kind of work do you do, and do you feel respected at work?

We spend much of our lives working, so it's important that people are respected for their work, no matter their position. Respect for one's work is demonstrated in many ways, such as paying workers decent wages, listening to how they think the work could best be done and allowing time and flexibility for people to pay attention to their families and their own health. At the Jewish Labor Committee, we understand that low-wage workers and middle-class workers are often taken advantage of, and that it's important to stand up for all workers. We work in the Jewish community to gather support for workers.

Many people who have jobs don't get paid enough to pay for basic needs or work in unsafe conditions. What are the ways that unions, government policy and consumer demand can help change workers' conditions?

For the better part of a century, the Jewish Labor Committee has worked to engage the Jewish community in supporting union campaigns, legislation and consumer boycotts that have improved the lives of thousands of people. When businesses and legislators see that the Jewish community takes a stand on worker issues, it makes a significant difference. In the past year, the New England Jewish Labor Committee supported Verizon workers, janitors and Harvard University dining-hall workers to win union contracts that improved their wages, provided job security and improved or continued their health-care benefits. Currently, in the Massachusetts Legislature, we are working to pass an increase of the minimum wage to $15 an hour, as well as pass the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act to help employees when they or their family members are ill, or when a new child comes into the family.

The story of Passover teaches us that slavery is wrong. Where does slavery currently exist in the U.S. and in the world, and what's being done to stop it?

It's hard to imagine that slavery exists today, but it does, even in the United States-on farms, in prisons and in homes. In recent years, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, whose work the Jewish Labor Committee has been involved with for the past five years, exposed and halted slavery on farms in Florida. There are also domestic workers across the U.S. and in Massachusetts who are not allowed to leave the households where they work because their employers have taken their passports and cell phones to prevent them from leaving. The Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers, along with the New England Jewish Labor Committee, is one of the groups fighting against this.Our criminal-justice system does not protect prisoners from working for nothing or almost nothing, producing large profits for corporations in much the same way African-American slaves worked as slaves in the U.S. before the Civil War. We have many social-action groups in Massachusetts synagogues that are working for criminal-justice reform. There are also organizations, such as the National Council of Jewish Women, who are working to stop the practice of girls and young women being taken into the sex industry against their will.

In our society, people who have different work lives than we do may be invisible to us. What might we gain, as individuals and as a society, by getting to know people who earn their living in different ways than we do?

Part of the reason our country is experiencing such a big political divide is that we don't have much real contact with people of different socio-economic classes than our own. As economic inequality has grown, we have less easy opportunities to build relationships with people who have different kinds of jobs. Reaching out to people and hearing each other's stories will help bridge that divide. This helps everyone feel more connected, hopeful and less alone.


Chag pesach same'ach! Happy Passover!

From DC to MA: Paid Family and Medical Leave

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Victory in DC!

Yesterday, the DC Council passed the Universal Paid Leave Act. More than 200 organizations, including Jewish United For Justice, worked tirelessly in conjunction with supportive legislators to win this progressive legislation.Under the new law, all private-sector workers will be eligible for 8 weeks of paid paid parental leave (for biological, adoptive and foster parents), 6 weeks of paid family caregiving leave, and 2 weeks of paid medical leave.Only three states currently offer paid family and medical leave: California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. It's time for Massachusetts to join that list!

How can we pass the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act in Massachusetts?

Tell us your about experiences!The Paid Family and Medical Leave Act is one of the three priorities of the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition for the upcoming year. Right now, as a member of the coalition, we're helping to collect stories of people who have experienced the need to take family or medical leave from their employment. This includes, but is not limited to: taking care of a family member; a personal injury or illness; adoption, fostering, or birth of a child.We encourage you to tell your story if you had a positive experience with paid time off OR if you suffered because of a lack of paid family and medical leave. Please submit your story here. Your story will help us to educate legislators and members of the public and move them to support of the PFMLA.

Save the Date: Fight for $15 hearing on Tues. Oct. 13 at the State House

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Join the Jewish community in supporting the Fight for $15.The Jewish community is on board with the Fight for $15. In addition to the JLC's support and involvement, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis both publicly stated their support for the Fight for $15 campaign. The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action has made this a priority.Now, we need YOU to come out and make sure these bills actually pass!On Oct. 13, the Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development will hear testimony on Fight for $15 bills. These include multiple bills to create a $15 per hour minimum wage for workers; a bill to ensure fair scheduling for workers; and a bill to raise the tipped minimum wage.Join the JLC and our partners from the Raise Up MA Coalition at the State House on October 13th to show your support for these bills.What is the Fight for $15?The Fight for $15 has grown from an effort to raise standards in the fast-food industry, into a broader movement to improve wages and conditions for low wage employees across Massachusetts. In 2013-2014, the state legislature passed the highest State Minimum Wage in the country, as well as Earned Sick Time. But a minimum wage is NOT a living wage. We need to fight for better working conditions too.What will the day look like?Where: Massachusetts State House 24 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02133When: 11:30 am Rally and march. 12:00 pm Lobby - meet with your legislators. Meet in Room 437. 1:00 pm Attend the hearing in Room A-1. 2:30 pm Assemble at Grand Stair Case and proceed to a fast food action.Let us know if you can make it by emailing newenglandjlc@jewishlabor.org or calling 617-227-0888.