Understanding EWOC (Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee) | Dawn Tefft & Sam Harshner | TMR

Then, Sam’s joined by Dawn Tefft, a Lead Organizer with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), and Sam Harshner, organizer and Adjunct Instructor of Political Science and History at Marquette University, to discuss their work with EWOC and its central mission. Dawn Tefft and Sam Harshner dive right into the creation of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee in early 2020 in response to the impact of the pandemic on workplaces, with the DSA joining with United Electorate to help sponsor and strategize labor organizing and the establishment of unions across the US in the fight for safe workplace policy in a pandemic. After briefly touching on EWOC’s work at Marquette University, Dawn and Sam walk through the biggest challenges that faced workplace organizing throughout the pandemic, and how easy it is for workers to unite over mediocre and unsafe working conditions.

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I want to welcome you to the program Dawn Tefft. She is a lead volunteer organizer with the emergency workplace organizing committee. She is also a labor organizer herself. And Sam Harshner who is also a labor organizer and adjunct instructor of political science and history at Marquette University. Dawn, let's start with you. We've had EWOC. The emergency workplace organizing committee has come up a lot on the show over the past I don't know six months or so, maybe longer. I don't really have a concept of it anymore. But tell us what EWOC does. so EWOC was formed in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. It's a joint project of the democratic socialists of America and United Electric, one of the unions that is most dedicated to helping workers organize democratically into helping workers take action as necessary. Which is also something that DSA is very invested in. You know democracy and action are necessary to get movement on the things that workers and voters both care about. and employers weren't protecting workers during the pandemic. so not enough employers were providing masks or PPE or safe distancing policies, remote work policies, or Hazard pay for Frontline workers. So we were supporting workers in pretty much every primary industry around the country. And have now helped thousands of workers as a result. And we helped them identify a short list of key issues and create a campaign to win on those issues. And to do that we help them in a variety of ways from providing them with organizing training to helping them build lists of co-workers to talk to about organizing and planning escalating actions. And then now we've transitioned to helping workers form unions which is our primary area of focus. since unions provide workers the ability to negotiate legally binding contracts which means the employer can't just take back any of their organizing wins over time. which they can do if they don't have a contract right? And so for this, we help them form organizing committees that are representative of the workplace like in terms of you know gender race you know background this Financial background these kinds of things, and then educate the committee about how to have effective conversations with their co-workers that that really help the group learn about the major issues in the workplace the things that the most workers care about. the things that are rising to the surface. and that over time led to commitments to form a union from a majority of workers.