The Washtenaw County Workers’ Center (WCWC) is a nonprofit organization that provides a safe space for immigrant and native-born people working in our county’s low-wage private service sector to come together to address their workplace issues and help build a more just economy.
We organize! We bring together the people who do this work, and we build alliances with other community people and organizations who share our ideals and goals.
We educate! We help our members to understand their rights as workers and immigrants. We gather and analyze data on legal violations and other chronic problems in this part of our local economy, and we report what we find to community allies and politicians.
We agitate! We also use the information we gather to develop effective strategies for addressing the problems that we document. These strategies include workplace justice campaigns targeting particularly bad employers, and public policy campaigns that aim to change local or state government laws, regulations and/or enforcement practices.
Since June 2008, we have worked closely with a new worker center – the Restaurant Opportunities Center-Michigan (ROC-MI) – to help it get started in the tri-county area of Metro Detroit and in Washtenaw County. Members of our Board serve on ROC-MI’s Advisory Board and ROC-MI’s coordinator serves on our Board.
In October 2009, we began the Household Worker Organizing Project. The project aims to organize, educate and empower domestic workers – nannies, housekeepers, and home elder caregivers -- on the model pioneered by Domestic Workers United (DWU) of New York. Working closely with the DWU and the other workers centers that founded the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), we will develop a variant of their model appropriate to Washtenaw County.
For the latest on activities relating to the Household Worker Organizing Project, check out our blog "WCWC Now!"