Worker Power
Georgia STAND-UP partners with organized labor to elevate worker issues, engaging in strategic advocacy efforts to advance economic equity and opportunity across industries.
Building Worker Power
Georgia STAND-UP partners with organized labor highlighting worker’s issues, engaging in visibility activities including the Delta airline workers picket, TSA informational picket, Teamster’s pickets; advocating with elected officials such as participating in a labor meeting with members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce; serving on the coordinating committee, hosting at the Movement Center, and presenting at the National Nurses Union Town Hall; participating in the IUPAT Strategic Cities Summit; and serving on the AFL-CIO’s Electric Battery Coalition working to secure community benefits agreements in regions impacted by the industry.
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Beginning in 2004 as one of the region’s first labor/community partnerships, Georgia STAND-UP was created to bridge the racial gap between Black communities and organized labor, a gap that had arisen because of historic discrimination and exclusion. Over the last nearly 20 years STAND-UP has built and sustained a strong, productive relationship with the Atlanta North Georgia Labor Council, the North Georgia Building Trades Council, and national union networks as we have implemented training, hiring, and advocacy initiatives designed to improve economic opportunities and build political power for marginalized workers.
STAND-UP envisions a South where every worker, particularly those historically marginalized, holds the power to steer the worker policies and structures impacting their lives, ensuring worker security, dignity, and fair value for all work undertaken.
Building Worker Power
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Recognizing the immense economic disparity between white and Black workers in Atlanta, in 2009, STAND-UP introduced a workforce training affiliate, Trade-Up: a prep-apprenticeship program designed to provide a pathway for recruiting, training, and placing young people from disadvantaged, neglected minority communities into well-paying, unionized construction trades. Trade-Up has been designated a regional workforce agency by the Atlanta Regional Commission and has won an award of distinction from the Department of Labor.
As the recent, unprecedented federal investments in the green infrastructure have made clear that a shift to the Green economy has begun, STAND-UP launched the Build-Up: Green Workforce Alliance (BUGWA) to ensure that minority workers of color are not left behind by this immense wave of economic opportunity. By providing comprehensive skills development and hands-on training in energy efficiency and solar panel installation, BUGWA seeks to prepare Southern workers from traditionally marginalized communities, particularly low-income individuals and workers of color, for a successful and sustainable transition into the green economy.