Projects

Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center: The Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center (“CityWork”) is a resource for the thousands of low-wage immigrant working men and women in the Austin area who frequently don’t get paid for the work they have performed. The CityWork educates immigrant workers about their rights – regardless of their immigration status – and helps them learn how to use the system to recover the wages they have earned, how to avoid being cheated in the future, and how they can work together with community groups to systemically reform this common workplace injustice. The Equal Justice Center coordinates the activities of the CityWork with support from our project partners, Casa Marianella and the Catholic Charities Office of Immigrant Concerns. We also work in close collaboration with other key community supporters including the Mexican Consulate, area immigrant service providers, the Austin Police Department, and local attorneys.

Transnational Worker Rights Clinic - University of Texas School of Law

The Transnational Worker Rights Clinic is a groundbreaking partnership between the EJC and the University of Texas Law School. Law students enrolled in the Clinic work at the EJC’s Central Texas Immigrant Workers’ Rights Center, helping transnational migrant workers recover unpaid wages. The students come to see the human face of trans-national labor issues, working directly with men and women who have migrated across international boundaries to find work in the U.S. that will support the families and communities they were forced to leave behind in their home countries. In the Clinic, students gain hands-on legal experience applying low-wage employment laws and adapting those laws to better protect vulnerable migrant workers in our rapidly growing transnational workforce. They also learn to use new tools from the emerging field of international labor and human rights law to protect basic workplace fairness, both here and abroad. The Clinic is taught and supervised by EJC Director Bill Beardall. Through the clinic, EJC is helping train a new generation of employment rights attorneys, who will have both the skill and the heart to carry the struggle for human rights and workplace justice into the global arenas of the twenty-first century.

Injured Workers' Justice Project

The Injured Workers’ Justice Project promotes systemic reforms in Texas’ notoriously broken workers compensation system. Texas has more than 1.7 million workers who are not covered by worker’s compensation insurance for workplace injuries, because Texas is the only state that does not require any employer to carry worker’s compensation insurance. Even for those workers who are covered by workers’ compensation, Texas is acknowledged to have the weakest workers compensation protections in the nation. EJC’s new Injured Workers’ Justice Project has been developed by our newest attorney, Allen Cooper, working through a Fellowship in Public Interest Law established by the University of Texas Law School faculty. In 2007 the Project will be working with labor organizations, public interest groups, health care organizations, and workplace injury attorneys to advance legislative and administrative reforms that will improve the system for injured workers. The Injured Workers’ Justice Project is also providing direct support to injured workers and developing training and support materials for advocates and community organizations that assist injured workers.

Poultry Worker Justice Project

The EJC's Poultry Worker Justice Project is a regional initiative that works with poultry processing workers in the South to increase their capacity to combat abusive labor practices. Poverty-level wages, high employee-turnover and high injury rates define what it means to work at a poultry processing plant. The Project’s goal is to empower immigrant and US-born poultry workers to have a greater voice on the issues that affect their lives. The Equal Justice Center is developing responsive and accountable relationships with poultry workers and community members that: (1) build alliances within the workforce across divisions of race, nationality and immigration status; (2) amplify the workers’ voice through responsive union representation; (3) strengthen collaboration among faith-based justice advocates, labor unions and civil rights groups; and (4) give poultry workers access to the advocacy skills and resources that will empower them to advocate for their rights in the workplace and to become full participants in a more equitable community.

Fair Defense Project

The EJC's Fair Defense Project is part of a coalition campaign to reform indigent defense practices in Texas. In Texas modernization of criminal defense representation for those too poor to hire a lawyer began in 2001 when Texas enacted the historic Texas Fair Defense Act. EJC Executive Director Bill Beardall, who led the coalition campaign to enact that law, has always emphasized that the 2001 law was just the beginning of the necessary reform process. EJC's Fair Defense Project has played a key role in defending the 2001 reforms against persistent legislative efforts to roll them back. Our Fair Defense Project also plays a vital role in sustaining steady forward movement with important incremental reforms in the Legislature, in the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, the State Bar of Texas, and in local criminal justice systems across the state.

Additional Workplace Justice Projects

EJC is engaged in a variety of initiatives aimed at helping low income working families secure their basic employment rights, including: the right to fair wages; the right to safe working conditions; the right to organize; the right to dignified treatment free of discrimination; and the right of fair access to the legal system to enforce employment protections. EJC's work is particularly concerned with combating exploitation of immigrant and transnational workers, recognizing that such exploitation harms immigrant and non-immigrant workers alike. EJC's groundbreaking programs include its Poultry Worker Justice Project aimed at protecting and advancing the employment rights of poultry processing workers in the South and its Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center which is helping low-wage workers in the Austin area defend their right to be paid for their labor.