Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream | Janice Fine 

Raise the Floor and Build Ladders: Workforce Strategies Supporting Mobility and Stability for Low-Income Workers | Maureen Conway & Steven L. Dawson

Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment & Labor Laws in America's Cities | Annette Bernhardt et al., 2009

Retaliation Survey and Interview Documentation Tools (English, Spanish)

Denied Dignity at Work in Illinois: An Initial Report of Findings

Denied Dignity at Work in Illinois: Initial Research Findings (Pamphlet)

Protect Temp Workers Who Blow the Whistle

Government-Community Workplace Partnerships in Enforcement

The Abuse that Keeps Wage Theft in the Dark

Chicago's Growing Low-Wage Workforce | Marc Doussard, Ph.D

Unregulated Work in Chicago: The Breakdown of Workplace Protections in the Low-Wage Labor Market | Nik Theodore et al., 2010

The report, Challenging the Business of Fear, features first-of-its-kind research based on surveys and interviews with nearly 300 workers employed in a broad cross-section of Illinois’ low-wage industries. Collaborators, Raise the Floor Alliance, a coalition of Chicago-area worker centers, and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), captured what happened when these workers were injured or tried to address abuse at work.

Read the Executive Summary here

Raise The Floor Alliance (RTF) is an Illinois based non-profit and legal clinic that supports excluded and exploited workers in low-wage industries to know, defend, and improve their employment rights. RTF was founded by Arise Chicago, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Chicago Community & Workers Rights, Chicago Workers Collaborative, Latino Union, Warehouse Workers for Justice, and Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. As a backbone organization and space for collective action, RTF brings strength to our community partners by providing research, communications, policy, and legal support for campaigns that promote safe, dignified, and stable work

Overview of Role

Raise the Floor Alliance’s legal department specializes in areas of the law that are of special concern to excluded and exploited workers, including among others, workplace sexual violence, immigration protections for workers engaged in labor disputes, and expanding opportunities for workers with criminal records. RTF’s litigation practice concentrates heavily on wage and hour cases, but also expands into discrimination and other labor and employment cases.

The Staff Attorney will be responsible for managing a substantial docket of cases in these areas, with special emphasis on the interaction of labor/employment law and the criminal legal system, including expungement and sealing of criminal records for worker center members.

For more information, view the full hiring announcement.

Newly released Department of Homeland Security Guidelines detail process with federal, state, and labor enforcement agencies to better enforce employment laws. Advocates cite concerns and positive developments.