An ad hoc coalition of liberal Jewish organizations is teaming up with a national labor union in order to promote social justice for low-wage workers in eight cities, after the success of a similar partnership in Los Angeles.

The coalition — comprising groups in New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and St. Paul, Minn. — is meeting for a conference November 16 in Los Angeles with the combined needle trades-hotel worker union Unite Here.

The conference, which is being underwritten by the union and by the Jewish Fund for Justice, aims to forge bonds between the Jewish social justice organizations and the union locals to bring community leverage to bear as the locals face contractual negotiations.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“We hope that we’ll be able to create relationships between the Jewish social justice organizations and the union chapters, so that the Jewish community can play a role in achieving fair, equitable and decent contracts for these low-wage, mostly immigrant, workers,” said Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, which operates in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“The reason the Jewish Fund for Justice is holding the conference in Los Angeles is because of the successful relationship between the Progressive Jewish Alliance and Local 11 of Unite Here, which played an important role in helping to resolve a contract conflict earlier this year,” Sokatch continued. “So we’re working with that model in cities with the same issue, in order to form a coordinated, aggressive, progressive Jewish-labor alliance on behalf of working people.”

Sokatch was referring to a 14-month labor dispute resolved earlier this year involving unionized workers at nine Los Angeles hotels. The workers, with salaries starting at about $11 an hour, struck briefly over alleged unfair labor practices. In a development that the Los Angeles Jewish Journal covered extensively, Jewish groups including the Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Workmen’s Circle promoted a boycott of seven of the hotels, which are used frequently for Jewish community functions. The Jewish groups also rallied in support of the workers.

According to Simon Greer, executive director of the Jewish Fund for Justice, the upcoming conference fits in well with the organization’s goal of serving as a bridge between Jewish social justice groups and “movement-building allies and partners” nationally.

“There’s an opportunity to take the local work to a national scale,” Greer said. “There’s an opportunity to create structural change, to bring Jewish values to bear on the economy.”

Greer praised Unite Here’s general president, Bruce Raynor, and its hospitality president, John Wilhelm. “It’s a tribute to Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm that the union wants to build coalitions in the faith-based community,” Greer said. “It’s a sign of things to come.”

Raynor, who is Jewish, leads the needle-trades half of Unite Here. That half has long ties to the Jewish community, having its historical roots in two Jewish-led garment workers unions. Those unions, in turn, provided the cadre that for decades spearheaded the Jewish Daily Forward.

In addition to the Progressive Jewish Alliance, groups participating in the upcoming conference include Jewish Community Action in St. Paul, Jews United for Justice in Washington, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice in New York, the Jewish Labor Committee and the Workmen’s Circle in Boston, and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago. Unite Here is expected to send top organizers from those cities as well as some of its national leadership.

The conference represents a further flowering of a significant upsurge in grass-roots activity on the Jewish left. The Progressive Jewish Alliance, formed in 1999 by dissident members of the American Jewish Congress who left after what they said was a rightward turn by that group, has grown into an organization that has several thousand members and recently opened an office in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the Jewish Fund for Justice has amassed a base of several thousand donors.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount