Workers with Records: Reclaiming Rights, Dreams, and Dignity

We envision a society that ensures workers with records have good jobs that support them and their families and communities. We collaborate with workers and partners to advance this vision through transformational policies and narratives.

Historically, racist policies have led to mass criminalization and employment discrimination, resulting in significant economic challenges for people with records. These hardships have particularly affected Black communities, as well as Latinx and Indigenous populations.

Workers with records are organizing to defend and expand their rights when it comes to incarceration, supervision, job search, employment, and more.

The criminal legal system affects economic stability for all of us. Unscrupulous employers exploit the work of incarcerated people and people with records, eroding wages for everyone, driving up poverty among workers with records and their families, and exacerbating structural racism, especially for Black people.

We’re inspired by impacted people who have fought back and achieved gains that raise the floor for all workers. When labor and justice reform movements work together, we can spur systems change.

We center Black women because U.S. labor policies have segregated Black women into critical roles like caregiving, farmwork, healthcare, and teaching, while underpaying them and undervaluing their well-being and the well-being of their families and communities.

When Black women affected by occupational segregation are also impacted by the criminal legal system, directly or through loved ones, they bear the burden of fines and fees, an informal reentry system, and conviction barriers. We collaborate with Black women fighting for economic justice, centering their joy and dreams.

We are committed to advancing economic justice alongside workers with records by:

• Expanding access to good jobs for workers with records through policy changes like fair chance hiring laws and occupational licensing reforms.
• Identifying and addressing the forces and incentives that drive workers with records into exploitative jobs.
• Integrating the perspectives of workers with records into the broader labor and workers’ rights movements.
• Partnering with organizations that build power among workers with records—including worker centers and worker cooperatives.
• Educating policymakers and employers about the importance and value of workers with records.
• Supporting expanded labor standards and protections for incarcerated and court-supervised workers.