2017 Annual Report: United We Stand—With Workers

Letter from the Executive Director

Friends,

In 2017, workers around the nation faced extraordinary challenges and attacks on their hard-won workplace rights to fair pay and safe workplaces, their right to join together to bargain over working conditions, and their right to hold their employers accountable for unfair labor practices.

Following years of slow but steady progress on these fronts, the swift and ruthless attempts to roll back workers’ rights and benefits threaten both immediate and long-term harm to the economic security and well-being of working people.

Despite President Donald Trump’s inaugural pledge that “every decision … will be made to benefit American workers,” his administration and the 115th Congress have repeatedly proved through their actions that they are using their power primarily to benefit corporations and the super-rich, at the expense of workers and their families. Right out of the box, the failed attempt to install anti-worker fast-food magnate Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor, along with a torrent of repeals, executive orders, and agency actions, underscored the real and immediate threats to working people.

Over the next 12 months, NELP continued to fight dozens of attempts to roll back rules or cut agency funds for worker programs. These assaults make clear the answer to the question: Just who is this administration really fighting for?

Yet despite these challenges, with your support and in partnership with allies nationwide, NELP made real progress for workers in 2017. We helped partners win landmark labor protections for temp workers in Illinois; a $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis—a first in the Midwest; and new ban-the-box legislation making California the 10th state to extend these protections to the private sector. Our toolkits offered guidance on accessing disaster unemployment assistance to millions of workers affected by the devastating hurricanes and wildfires of 2017. And during a year of harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and aggressive immigration enforcement, our trainings and guides provided crucial information to workers and employers alike about what to do if immigration agents show up.

In NELP’s 49th year, our resolve is greater than ever to defend and advance the rights of working people. Economic injustice, structural racism, and inequality are systemic and intersecting problems, and addressing them requires us to work from the ground up to build systemic change.

We cannot do this work without you. As advocates, you have helped elevate workers’ voices across the nation, amplifying their message and their demands for more equitable work and workplaces. As responsible consumers, you choose to support businesses that protect workers’ rights. As philanthropists, your valuable support helps improve labor standards across the nation. And as workers, you understand why we are fighting to build worker power and to make every job a good job, with dignity and full opportunity for all.

We are profoundly grateful for your support. Together, we will not rest until all who work in our nation or aspire to work are able to achieve and sustain economic security, prosperity, and a better life for themselves and their families through their labor.

In solidarity and gratitude,

Christine L. Owens
Executive Director