The People's Organizing Collective:
USAS Local 3 @ Cornell University
TC Workers' Center
United Students Against Sweatshops
Jobs with Justice
POC:USAS#3 has a positive working relationship with Tompkins County's amazing grassroots community union. We're an official endorser its Countywide Living Wage Campaign, and are planning an organizing training and a climate-labor justice intersections event with the TCWC (both to be held in Spring 2019). A number of POC:USAS#3's student organizers serve in various capacities at the center (hotline advocates, board members, translators etc.), linking the larger edge to cutting-edge struggles in the local labor movement such as the #DoesCornellCare movement & the Campaign for NY Health's statewide single-payer push.
We're proud to be a wholly independent space for Cornell undergrads to organize in pursuit of economic justice. We're equally as proud to be a local of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), a prolific network of 150 college labor organizing collectives. USAS Locals from Alabama to Upstate New York share skills, strategies, and mutual support as we trek ahead with our myriad, oft-overlapping fights. USAS has a prolific legacy of victories on Cornell's campus & beyond, and POC:USAS#3 fully intends to build them. Some of those victories include the 2001 foundation of the Workers' Rights Consortium & the Cornell Store's 2017 cancellation of its sweatshop-profiteering Nike contracts. In February 2019, our group sent a 5 student-strong delegation to the USAS National Conference in Mississippi.
POC:USAS#3 is proud to count the robust Jobs with Justice (JwJ) network among its allies in the labor movement. Prior to our group's official reorganization as Cornell's official USAS Local, four undergraduate labor organizers traveled to D.C. for a student gathering hosted by JwJ. This powerful meeting-of-minds cemented their desire to reinvigorate powerful labor organizing on Cornell's campus, leading to POC:USAS#3's official establishment shortly thereafter. In Spring 2019, JwJ representatives will be coming to Cornell to co-host an organizing training with our organization. Further, JwJ's national stature allows us to quickly connect with top unions and organizers across the U.S.