4. Economic Justice Organizations

4.1. Worker Justice and Democracy Groups
4.2. International Worker Justice and Democracy Groups
4.3. Anti-Poverty and Low Income Housing Groups
4.4. Anti-Poverty Policy Groups
4.5. Employment Groups
4.6. Economic Justice Groups
4.7. Anti-Corporate Domination Groups
4.8. Progressive Economic Research Groups
4.9. Progressive Tax Groups
4.10. Consumer Protection Groups
4.11. Socially Responsible Business Groups
4.12. Worker Ownership Groups
4.13. Government Programs Preservation Groups

Also see 11.1. Progressive Labor Unions

and 6. Social Justice Organizations

4.1. Worker Justice and Democracy Groups

Jobs with Justice: Through coalitions of labor, community, religious, and constituency organizations, works to improve working people’s standard of living, fights for job security, and protects workers’ right to organize.
Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ): A network of people of faith that calls upon religious values in order to educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community in the United States on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and conditions for workers, and give voice to workers, especially low-wage workers.
Working America: A community affiliate of the AFL-CIO that fights in communities, states, and nationally for good jobs, affordable health care, world-class education, secure retirements, and real homeland security.
National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON): Strives to strengthen and expand the work of local day laborer organizing groups, in order to become more effective and strategic in building leadership, advancing low-wage worker and immigrant rights, and developing successful models for organizing immigrant contingent/temporary workers.

4.2. International Worker Justice and Democracy Groups

International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF): Works to achieve just and humane treatment for workers worldwide. Now includes the former U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP) and Global Labor Justice.
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS): An international student movement of campuses and individual students fighting for sweatshop free labor conditions and workers’ rights.
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance: An alliance of U.S.-based grassroots groups who are organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people.
Social Accountability International (SAI): Promotes human rights for workers around the world as a standards organization, primarily through the voluntary SA8000 international ethical workplace management system which is based on International Labor Organization (ILO) standards and U.N. Human Rights Conventions.
Cultural Survival: Partners with Indigenous communities around the world to help them defend their lands, languages, and cultures.

4.3. Anti-Poverty and Low Income Housing Groups

Coalition on Human Needs (CHN): An alliance of national civil rights, religious, labor, and professional organizations working together to promote public policies which address the needs of low-income and other vulnerable populations — children, women, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
RESULTS: Works to influence political decisions that will bring an end to poverty.
National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC): Works to end America’s affordable housing crisis.
National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH): A national network of currently and formerly homeless persons, activists and advocates, community and faith based service providers, and others committed to a single goal: to end homelessness.
National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC): Seeks to increase fair and equal access to credit and banking services for lower income and minority communities.
PolicyLink: A national research and action institute that works collaboratively to develop and implement local, state, and federal policies to achieve economic and social equity and ensure that everyone — including those from low-income communities of color — can contribute to and benefit from economic growth and prosperity.
Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP): A public interest law and policy organization which promotes policies to improve the economic security of low-income families and to secure access to our civil justice system for all low-income persons.
National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ): Engages in legal representation and policy advocacy around the U.S. to improve the administration of cash assistance, Medicaid, food stamps, and childcare.
National Homelessness Law Center: Works to prevent and end homelessness by serving as the legal arm of the nationwide movement to end homelessness.
Shriver Center on Poverty Law: Fights for economic and racial justice by litigating, shaping policy, and training and connecting people in the advocacy community.

4.4. Anti-Poverty Policy Groups

The Urban Institute: A nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization
National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP): A research and policy organization at Columbia University that identifies and promotes strategies that prevent child poverty in the United States and that improve the lives of low-income children and families.
MDRC: A social policy research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being of low-income people.
Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC): Generates, gathers, and disseminates information regarding the relationship between race and poverty, and promotes the development and implementation of policies and practices that alleviate conditions caused by the interaction of race and poverty.

4.5. Employment Groups

National Jobs for All Coalition (NJFAC): A coalition of many groups working for full employment at livable wages. Also works to demonstrate the linkages between unemployment and other problems facing the nation, such as women’s rights, the environment, and economic justice.
National Employment Law Project (NELP): Advocates on behalf of low-wage workers, the poor, the unemployed, and other groups that face significant barriers to employment and government systems of support.
Good Jobs First: Provides timely, accurate information to the public, the media, public officials, and economic development professionals on best practices in state and local job subsidies.
National Skills Coalition: A broad‐based coalition of employers, unions, education and training providers, and public officials working toward a vision of an America that grows its economy by investing in its people so that every worker and every industry has the skills to compete and prosper.
Jobs for the Future (JFF): Works to strengthen our society by creating educational and economic opportunity for those who need it most.
Opportunity@Work: Seeks to rewire the U.S. labor market so that all individuals witout a college degree and Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) can work, learn, and earn to their full potential.
Workforce Strategies Initiative (WSI) of the Aspen Institute: A program of the Aspen Institute that identifies and advances strategies that help low-income Americans gain ground in today’s labor market.

4.6. Economic Justice Groups

United for a Fair Economy (UFE): Raises awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart. Also brings people together to take action to close the economic divide.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR): A coalition of more than 250 national, state, and local consumer, labor, investor, civil rights, community, small business, and senior citizen organizations working for real reform of the banking and financial system.
Groundwork Collaborative: Fights for progressive economic policy and narrative change to build accountable public power, break up concentrations of private power, and affirmatively center people too long left out of prosperity. Works with four core audiences — the media, policymakers, economic policy experts, and grasstops organizations.
Class Action: Raises consciousness about the issues of classism: class and money, and their powerful impact on our individual lives, our relationships, organizations, institutions, and culture.
Opportunity Agenda: A communications, research, and advocacy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity in America.
Fair Share: Seeks an America where everyone gets their fair share, does their fair share, and pays their fair share; and where everyone plays by the same rules.

Dream.Org

Founded by Van Jones. Works at the intersection of the environmental, economic, and racial justice movements to advance solutions to poverty and pollution. Formerly called the Dream Corps.

4.7. Anti-Corporate Domination Groups

American Economic Liberties Project: Translates the intellectual victories of the anti-monopoly movement into concrete, wide-ranging policy changes that can address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power.
CorpWatch: Works to expose corporate greed and counter corporate-led globalization by documenting the social, political, economic, and environmental impacts of transnational giants through education and activism. Also works to foster democratic control over corporations by building a grassroots globalization movement — a diverse movement for human rights, labor rights, and environmental justice.
Alliance for Democracy (AfD): Progressive populists working to free all people from corporate domination, to establish true democracy, and to create a just society with a sustainable, equitable economy.
Corporate Accountability International (CAI): Wages campaigns that challenge irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions around the world. Formerly, INFACT.
Center for Popular Democracy (CPD): Works in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations organizing alliances and progressive unions to create equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
Move to Amend: A coalition of hundreds of organizations committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests and calling for an amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.
Main Street Alliance: An alliance of small business owners who work to counteract the efforts of neoliberal policy proponents and the reactionary Right and to strengthen the small business sector as a proven path to an equitable and vibrant economy.
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund: Provides free and affordable legal services to grassroots, community-based environmental groups and rural municipal governments. And, particularly now, works to eliminate undue rights of corporations.

4.8. Progressive Economic Research Groups

Economic Policy Institute (EPI): Conducts research and promotes dialogue on economic policy issues, particularly the economics of poverty, unemployment, inflation, American industry, international competitiveness, and problems of economic adjustment as they affect people.
Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN): A collaboration of national, state, and regional groups that conduct economic research, develop and advocate for policy, mobilize public opinion, and win state policy victories.
Washington Center for Equitable Growth: Builds a bridge between academic researchers and policymakers to ensure that research on equitable growth and inequality is relevant, accessible, and informative to the policymaking process.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP): Conducts research and analysis on proposed budget and tax policies, with an emphasis on those affecting low- and moderate-income people.
National Priorities Project (NPP): Offers citizen and community groups tools and resources to shape federal budget and policy priorities which promote social and economic justice, particularly educating the public on the impacts of federal tax and spending policies at the community level.
Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR): Conducts professional research and public education to promote democratic debate on important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): A national policy center and field laboratory for high-road capitalism — a competitive market economy of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and capable democratic government.
Financial Policy Forum / Derivatives Study Center: Conducts economic policy research into financial markets, how they impact the overall economy, and what should be the most appropriate level of regulation and taxation of those markets.
American Antitrust Institute: Researches and advocates on the benefits of competition and the use of antitrust enforcement as a vital component of national and international competition policy.
Democracy Collaborative: A research and development lab for the democratic economy, seeking to demonstrate in theory and in practice the principles of a democratic economy, offering a vision of what that economy can be, designing models that demonstrate how it operates, and building in coalition with others the pathways to a new reality by connecting employee-owned enterprises, community corporations, co-ops, non-profits, and others.
In the Public Interest: Helps community organizations, advocacy groups, public officials, researchers, and the general public understand how the privatization of public goods impacts service quality, democracy, equity, and government budgets.
Institute for Economic and Racial Equity (IERE): A part of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University that advances economic opportunity and equity for individuals and families, particularly households of color and those kept out of the economic mainstream. Formerly the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP).
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College: A research organization devoted to developing viable, effective public policy responses to important economic problems both within the United States and abroad.

4.9. Progressive Tax Groups

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) / Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP): Works to give ordinary people a greater voice in the development of tax laws and to stand against the armies of special interest lobbyists working for corporations and the wealthy.
Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT): A non-partisan alliance of more than 100 state, national, and international organizations that work toward a fair tax system in a global economy and promote policies to combat the harmful impacts of corrupt financial practices.
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF): A diverse coalition of national, state, and local organizations united in support of a tax system that works for all Americans.
Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS): A budget watchdog fighting the politicians from both parties who continue to fund pork-barrel projects, hand out unfair subsidies and tax breaks, and make back room deals with lobbyists.

4.10. Consumer Protection Groups

Consumers Union (CU): An independent, nonprofit member organization that works side by side with consumers for truth, transparency, and fairness in the marketplace.
Consumer Federation of America (CFA): A coalition of 300 nonprofit organizations from throughout the nation that provides consumers a well-reasoned and articulate voice in decisions that affect their lives by gathering facts, analyzing issues, and disseminating information to the public, policymakers, and rest of the consumer movement.
Public Citizen: A consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader that works for consumer rights in the marketplace, safe and affordable health care, transportation safety, clean and safe energy sources, environmental protection, fair trade, campaign finance reform, and corporate and government accountability through advocacy, litigation, research, and public education.
U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG): A network of independent, state-based, citizen-funded organizations that advocate for the public interest to protect health and safety, encourage a sustainable economy, and foster a responsive democratic government using the time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposes, grassroots organizing, door-to-door canvassing, advocacy, and litigation.
Food & Water Watch: Works to ensure clean water and safe food sustainably produced by empowering people to take action to challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources.
Center for Auto Safety (CAS): An organization founded by Consumers Union and Ralph Nader in 1970 that provides consumers with a voice for auto safety and quality in Washington and helps lemon owners fight back across the country.
Center for Responsible Lending (CRL): Dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth by working to eliminate predatory lending and other abusive financial practices.
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI): Searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources.

4.11. Socially Responsible Business Groups

Green America: Helps harness economic power — the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace — to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. Formerly, Co-op America.
Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment: Promotes the concept, practice, and growth of socially responsible investing.
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR): An association of 275 faith-based institutional investors that press companies to be socially and environmentally responsible.
As You Sow: Uses capital markets, shareholder leverage, innovative legal strategies, and grantmaking to transform corporate behavior and create a more socially and environmentally just society.
Business for Social Responsibility (BSR): Helps companies of all sizes and sectors achieve success in ways that demonstrate respect for ethical values, people, communities, and the environment by implementing socially responsible business policies, practices, and processes.
American Sustainable Business Network (ASBN): Representing over 250,000 businesses, advocates for policy change and informs business owners, policymakers, and the public about the need and opportunities for building a vibrant, broadly prosperous, sustainable economy.
Common Future: Works to transform $1B or more of untapped capital (endowments, DAFs, traditional Wall Street investments) into community wealth and connect thousands of wealth-holders and creators to pursue a shared vision of long-term economic empowerment and prosperity through local business ownership, economic justice, cultural diversity, and environmental stewardship. Formerly, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)

4.12. Worker Ownership Groups

US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC): A national grassroots membership organization of and for worker cooperatives, other democratic workplaces, and the organizations which support the growth and continued development of worker cooperatives.
National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO): Serves as the leading source of accurate, unbiased information on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), equity compensation plans such as stock options, and ownership culture.

4.13. Government Programs Preservation Groups

Social Security Works: Defends our country’s most important anti-poverty program and organizes in the halls of Congress and in communities across the country to push for the expansion of Social Security.
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM): Advocates for the Social Security and Medicare programs and for all Americans who seek a healthy, productive and secure retirement.