The Vermont Jobs With Justice coalition has established a Workers' Rights Board, made up of political, community and religious leaders in Vermont who support workers when they attempt to organize. The Workers' Rights Board contacts abusive employers to assert the community's support for the unions, and intolerance for employer abuse. Other Jobs With Justice coalitions hope to set up similar Workers' Rights Boards in the coming year. After more than five decades of widespread and growing employer abuse, we should not expect to fix this problem quickly. Reversing current trends will take years of resistance by union members, workers who are organizing, and allies in their communities.
Employers are more determined than ever to lower their labor costs by any and all means.
To protect the right to organize and bring our country into the international mainstream of workers' rights, we need to combat their efforts. And that requires a rebirth of the workers' rights coalitions that emerged in the mid-1930s. But not only jobs. Slaves had jobs. We want jobs with justice.