Worker Power
Georgia STAND UP partners with grassroots organizations 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 grassroot coalitions highlighting worker’s issues, worker's rights and the need to increase worker power across the State. STAND UP has been instrumental in convening a wide cross section of stakeholders advocating for worker safety and fairness including a meeting with members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce; serving on the coordinating committee, hosting at the Movement Center. STAND UP has been successful in advancing community concerns demonstrated through its ability to secure community benefits agreements in regions impacted by the industry.
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Since its founding in 2004 as a collaborative alliance of grassroots organizations, Georgia STAND-UP was created to bridge the racial gap between Black communities and industry 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 community and industry stakeholders 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.