For Immediate Release, September 26, 2016
The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) is pleased to announce our new campaign to address Runaway Inequality.
In partnership with The Labor Institute, NJEA and New Jersey Policy Perspective, WEC is launching a campaign aimed at addressing and reversing the outsized influence of corporations and ending the financial strip mining of our economy by Wall Street firms.
WEC has hired Brandon Castro as campaign organizer, and plans to partner with Les Leopold, author of the book, Runaway Inequality, and director of The Labor Institute. The goal is to coordinate a large education initiative to train thousands of activists to help confront corporate power in New Jersey.
Brandon Castro most recently worked as a campaign organizer for several student groups including United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the nation’s largest youth-led labor campaign organization, which advocates for economic justice in partnership with worker and community organizations. For USAS, Castro worked in direct solidarity with workers, putting pressure on garment manufacturers to sign international health and safety accords and to allow independent monitoring organizations to inspect factories. Brandon also previously served as an intern for WEC, assisting with the Respect Our Right to Know campaign, health and safety training and Workers’ Memorial Day events.
Castro graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Labor Studies and a minor in Political Science from Rutgers University. Castro also served on the editorial board for The Voice, an award-winning student-run newspaper at Mercer County College.
“I am very excited about having the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned from both my Labor Studies degree and work as a student campaign organizer for WEC. This is such an important project, primarily because it is an opportunity to put the national conversation around income inequality to direct use in New Jersey. It represents a real opportunity to create change in the Garden State, to make progress on issues like worker health initiatives, the minimum wage, and environmental safeguards,” said Brandon Castro.
“We know that everyday working people just can’t seem to get ahead. Unfortunately, the big corporate players and the wealthiest 1 % just seem to play by a separate set of rules,” said Dan Fatton, executive director of the New Jersey Work Environment Council. “We are thrilled to have Brandon Castro join us to help launch an innovative state-based approach to these challenges and ultimately, to make sure that corporate power and influence doesn’t get in the way of good public policy.”
WEC will be conducting numerous train-the-trainer sessions in the coming months. If you are interested in participating, or holding a session in conjunction with a meeting or event, please contact Brandon Castro at [email protected].
