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Campaigns

Justice for Immigrants

A broken immigration system and insufficient labor protections go hand-in-hand in creating the conditions for super-exploitation of immigrant workers.
We need Comprehensive Immigration Reform now. At the national level, Fuerza Laboral is a member of National People's Action Immigrant and Worker Rights team as well as a member organization of the Reform Immigration For America movement. Locally, we work in collaboration and coalition with other community organizations as well as faith-based institutions in affirming the human rights of all peoples and organizing to end xenophobic policies.

Colibri Workers for Rights and Justice

We are organizing with the 280 workers from the Colibri factory in RI who were laid off en masse without even one day of notice. Federal Law under the WARN Act states that when a company with 100 or more workers closes, they must give 60 days notice to their workers. Because of this violation, Colibri's workers demand 60 days pay, 60 days of health insurance, and severance pay based on years worked. We hold Colibri and their owners, Founders Equity (a multimillion dollar private equity firm in NYC) responsible for this violation.

Click on News to see updates, press and video of this campaign.

Campaign to End Wage Theft

The most frequent abuse of immigrant and temporary workers in RI is wage theft, also known as non-payment of wages. This takes a number of forms: illegal deductions from paychecks, overtime hours paid as regular hours, paychecks that bounce, workers misclassified as independent contractors and not paid, workers told by their employer that they will be paid "next week" and after several weeks of free labor the employer disappears, and threats made by employers.

Our Campaign to End Wage Theft utilizes a diversity of tactics to stop this abuse. Our Wage Theft Clinic meets the first and third Tuesday of every month from 6:00-7:30 pm during which both individuals and groups of unpaid workers learn how to recover their stolen wages. The Wage Protectors is a group of our members who are trained in direct action to pressure unscrupulous employers. We work closely with the RI Dept. of Labor and Training and the Providence US DOL office to ensure enforcement of labor law, build coalitions around the issue and craft policy solutions.

Injured Workers' Committee

Immigrant workers have the highest rate of workplace accidents of any group. This is due to a number of factors: working in dangerous industries, not receiving appropriate safety equipment, and not receiving safety training and information in their own language. Fuerza Laboral is part of the Immigrant Workers' Rights Project with the Institute for Labor Studies and Research and the Immigrants in Action Committee of St. Teresa's Church, which conducts trainings statewide on workplace accidents and workers' rights under the Workers' Compensation system. We are also a part of the Immigrant Worker Task Force at the RI Workers Compensation Court where we have a seat at the table to make the Workers' Compensation system more accessible to immigrant workers.

Fuerza Laboral's Theatre Brigade

Theatre can help us imagine how another world could be possible, it allows us to role play through difficult decisions or actions to prepare for the real thing, and it can be an educational tool to learn our rights and how to organize. Fuerza Laboral's Theatre Brigade, under the volunteer directorship of Maria Cristina Betancur, a founding member of Fuerza Laboral, does all of these things.

Update 1/10: Members are writing a new play about workplace accidents and what injured workers can do to fight for their rights. The play is based on the true story of a member of Fuerza Laboral, Jonathan Hernández, his struggle to get compensation for his accident, and how he used his own struggle to educate other injured workers.