Background

The mission of the United Workers Congress (UWC) is to expand the right to organize for all workers. The building of power among low-wage workers is based on our capacity to organize and collectively bargain. While the nine sectors of workers represented in the UWC have a long history of organizing, each of our sectors is excluded – either by default or design – from labor laws and regulations in the United States, thus compromising our capacity to achieve economic justice and security. Therefore the fundamental vision and mission of the UWC is to expand the right to organize so that all workers can exert their power and win economic justice for themselves and all workers. Through the UWC we are able to leverage power and resources that would otherwise be impossible with one sector or alliance on their own.

The Excluded Workers Congress was born in June of 2010, at the US Social Forum in Detroit, when nine sectors of workers who are by default excluded from labor laws came together. This historic convening was the work of three national workers rights alliances that are part of the Unity Alliance, including Jobs with Justice, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. The nine sectors included: guest workers, domestic workers, day laborers, tipped-minimum wage workers (such as restaurant workers), Black workers in "right to work for less" states in the South, farm workers, taxi drivers, workfare workers, and formerly incarcerated workers. Calling it the Excluded Workers Congress, these workers spent over four hours together, sharing experiences, organizing strategies and visions for labor laws that would include and protect the entire working-class.

Coming out of the US Social Forum, the spirit of solidarity and hope for a renewed workers movement was electric. Representatives of each of the sectors met to brainstorm concrete strategies and ideas for collaborating into the future. The US Social Forum gathering had created the spark and energy to form the Excluded Workers Congress officially as its own strategic alliance. The work of building the Excluded Workers Congress has been integrated with a global conversation and organizing strategy to expand the right to organize and re-imagine labor laws for the 21st century for all workers around the world.