Socialism

Last month, from June 27 to 29, The Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC) held its first ever in-person conference: The “United & Win” Conference, co-hosted by Labor@Wayne. The location: right here in Detroit, on the campus of Wayne State University. Hundreds of labor activists from around the United States and Canada attended, and members of our own DSA chapter made up a large contingent of organizers, volunteers, and attendees for the event.

EWOC was born in the early days of COVID-19. DSA members–many of them volunteers and workers on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign–teamed up in its creation with the militant United Electrical Workers (UE) union. The idea was to help workers confronting COVID in their workplaces to organize for the protections they needed.

One of EWOC’s early victories was helping workers at a Michigan Taco Bell win hazard pay, paid sick leave, and personal protective equipment necessary to work during the early days of the pandemic. EWOC has stayed busy and has grown in the five years since, turning attention to the growing number of union drives in the time of Starbucks and Amazon organizing. Currently, EWOC has more than 400 volunteer organizers, 200 additional volunteers, and is supporting over 350 active campaigns.