These Philly community orgs are working with the city to educate workers on their rights, regardless of whether they’re unionized

The city of Philadelphia’s Office of Worker Protections has chosen 10 organizations that will receive a combined $95,000 in funding for 2024 to educate workers about local labor laws.

The awards are part of the office’s Community Outreach and Education Fund, in its second year. As part of the program, the organizations will work with the office through June 2024 on awareness efforts.

“The main focus of the fund is to really invest in our relationships with trusted community leaders who are truly the human element to connecting these laws with workplaces across the city and families across the city,” said Candace Chewning, director of the city’s Office of Worker Protections.

Three organizations, as “community programming partners,” will receive $20,000: Coalition for Restaurant Safety and Health/El Comité de Trabajadorxs de Restaurantes, VietLead, and Restaurant Opportunities Centers of Pennsylvania.

Seven more “resource sharing partners” will get $5,000 each: Blackwell Culture Alliance Inc., Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, Haitian American United for Change, National Domestic Workers Alliance Pennsylvania Chapter, New Options More Opportunities (NoMo), Philly Black Worker Project, and Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition (SEAMAAC).

Many of the workers who are covered by Philadelphia labor laws are not represented by unions, Chewning noted, and community organizations can help to educate those workers about their rights. Last year, she said, the program allowed the office to work with more than 40 organizations that reach workers in 25 languages.

She also noted that her office’s fund requires far less documentation and auditing than the typical grant program. “We’re trusting their expertise to provide this information to their community,” she said.

Each of last year’s recipients received more than $16,000 in the fund’s first year, when the office had more than $200,000 to divvy up. Chewning said the program was made possible last year by the city’s Operation Transformation Fund, but this year funding is coming entirely from the city Labor Department’s budget. She hopes it will grow in coming years.

“There are two levels of partnerships designed to compensate organizations more fully who wanted to spend significant time in workers’ rights for this cycle,“ Chewning said. “This created flexible paths for both the partners ready to conduct direct programming on workplace protections, as well as those more interested in focusing on resource sharing.”

The Philly Black Worker Project (PBWP) is a second-time recipient of the program. Last year, the organization used the program’s funding to help hire full-time staff, PBWP director Brittany Alston said. Aside from that amount, she noted, the PBWP benefited from printing and translation services provided by the Office of Worker Protections.

“We want to make sure people are placed in a position where they can self-advocate,” said Alston, so “workers are in a position to say, ‘This is the law, these are my rights, and it’s your responsibility to adhere to and comply with the law.’ ”

PBWP is getting $5,000 this year, an amount that “is always helpful and nowhere near enough to do the work we need to do,” Alston said. The organization also gets fellowships and raised close to $50,000 last year in individual community member donations.

El Comité de Trabajadorxs de Restaurantes used last year’s award to create a training program for Latinx worker leaders, co-coordinator Carly Pourzand said. The department’s funding allowed El Comité to provide 10 trainees with stipends for their time, during which they learned about organizing and worker protections, and helped the organization survey workers about their job conditions. This year, El Comité will expand the training program, bringing in a new cohort of worker leaders and adding a deeper track for trainees who completed last year’s program.

“We believe that workers most affected by these conditions, especially immigrant women, can best identify the issues and the solutions that will have the greatest impact,” Pourzand said. “Our worker leaders have taken powerful strides in creating better workplace conditions and helping other workers access their rights, such as paid sick leave.”

The Office of Worker Protections is under the city’s Department of Labor, which was created as its own department under Mayor Jim Kenney.

The department fought against proposed cuts to its budget in the current fiscal year, with workers’ rights organizations lobbying for money that would allow the Office of Worker Protections to hire additional staff and continue the community outreach and education fund at a similar level to last year, when it received money from the city’s operations transformation fund.

Fund recipients this year were chosen by a panel of stakeholders that include representatives of city departments and organizations such as Community Legal Services.

Since the office started its outreach work, Chewning said, 30% of worker complaints have come through community organizations.

“We know that what we’re doing is working with them,” she said. “Our inquiries and complaints increase exponentially each year.”