Grantees
Along with ecosystem-building and technical assistance, grantmaking to worker centers and other community-based 501c3 nonprofits is one of our key strategies for growing worker power in Minnesota.
Workers Confluence funds organizations that are partnering with labor unions to organize workers at the margins of the economy, with an emphasis on immigrant workers and workers of color. These partnerships range from exploratory, relationship-building efforts to well-established joint campaigns.
Workers Confluence Fund’s application process is currently by invitation only. Please contact jilian@workersfundmn.org if you believe your organization’s work may be a fit for Confluence funding.
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are home to the largest East African Diaspora population in North America. According to workers and organizers, employers like Amazon hire from this immigrant community in order to take advantage of their lack of familiarity with American workplace norms and their rights as workers. Awood educates and organizes East African workers to stand up to this systemic injustice. Through direct actions, public policy advocacy, and media campaigns, Awood’s worker-leaders have won numerous victories around fair pay, safety, and religious acommodations such as prayer breaks.
Along with labor partner Teamsters Local 120, Awood advocated successfully in 2023 for the Minnesota Warehouse Workers Protection Act. The WWPA is the strongest such legislation in the nation and takes aim at some of Amazon’s most harmful labor practices. Learn more about this victory from this Nation article co-authored by Awood Executive Director Abdirahman Muse.
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha
CTUL is the most established worker center in Minnesota, and their 2012 to 2016 partnership with SEIU Local 26 to organize retail janitors has provided a model for newer grantees to adapt and build from.
Through their Confluence grant, CTUL is working with the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council (BDC) – a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) organization – to raise labor standards in the construction industry. This is the most mature project funded by Confluence; after initially partnering with the Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council, this project has grown to include the regional councils of the Carpenters and Laborers unions. Together these partners have successfully advocated for the passage of Minnesota’s Construction Worker Wage Protection Act in 2023.
Kids Count on Us (ISAIAH Minnesota)
Kids Count on Us is part of ISAIAH’s broader campaign to make high quality, robustly-funded childcare available to all families in Minnesota. Partnered with Education Minnesota (the teachers and educational support professionals union), KCOU brings the voices of childcare teachers into the campaign, lifting up the fact that true equity in childcare must include living wages for this largely female, largely BIPOC workforce.
The Kids Count on Us program stands out due to its unique level of collaboration between childcare workers, childcare center owners, and parents. KCOU also builds bridges between urban and rural childcare teachers, highlighting the distinct challenges they face as well as their shared commitment to the kids they care for. In 2023, KCOU, ED MN, and their allies won a historic increase in state childcare funding, as well as the creation of a new state Department of Children, Youth and Families.
New Justice Project Minnesota fills a critical niche, organizing in the historically Black neighborhood of North Minneapolis. NJP calls itself “the political home for Black Minnesota, leading with love, liberation, and Black joy.” Their holistic approach includes campaigns for housing justice, environmental justice, and safety beyond policing. Through the Workers Confluence Fund, NJP is working with the Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council and Teamsters Local 120 to build new pathways into union careers for Black workers, with a particular focus on formerly incarcerated workers and green building trades through pre-apprenticeship programs.
In 2023 NJP partnered with the office of MN Attorney General Keith Ellison to stage a series of record expungement clinics. These events eliminated a major barrier to employment for many formerly incarcerated workers and significantly extended the reach of NJP’s Pathways program into this severely underserved community.
Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota
ROC-MN connects with restaurant and hospitality workers to educate them about their workplace rights, develop their leadership, and build strategies for change at the workplace and industry level.
ROC’s partnership with UNITE HERE Local 17 laid the groundwork for 200+ workers at 7 venues owned by First Avenue Productions to unionize, and workers at numerous other local restaurants and venues appear poised to follow. Workers Confluence has provided crucial support since the early stages of this collaboration, creating the capacity for staff of ROC and Local 17 to build relationships, map industry power, share information and insights, and develop a joint strategy.
Sex Workers Outreach Project of Minneapolis
SWOP’s advocacy led to the 2019 passage of a sweeping Adult Entertainment Ordinance in Minneapolis, and SWOP continues the work of educating strippers about their rights under the ordinance and advocating for adequate enforcement resources.
In 2023, with support from Workers Confluence and UNITE HERE Local 17, SWOP launched the Minneapolis Strippers Guild. While not a union (strippers are classified as independent contractors and thus can’t unionize), the Guild gives these workers a structure through which to come together and take action around their shared interests. Along with partners in labor and government, SWOP is now exploring strategies to address the (mis)classification issue and its unique impacts on workers in their community.