Nearly a dozen workers organizations gathered in Military Park in Newark on Wednesday to commemorate International Workers Day — and to use the moment to propose the New Jersey Job Bridge Program, a new plan for New Jersey’s most vulnerable workers. Their movement was launched by a recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy that showed more than 700,000 workers are excluded from the state’s unemployment benefits program, with immigrants, low-income workers and people of color most affected.
As well as celebrating May Day and International Workers Day, they were “demanding a safety net for all excluded workers in New Jersey,” said Rosanna Rodriguez, co-executive director of the Laundry Workers Center.
“New Jersey is at the forefront of what an unemployment program should look like across the country, but there are still a lot of workers who are not receiving unemployment benefits either because they’re ineligible or they’re having trouble accessing those benefits,” Francisco Diez, the senior policy strategist for economic justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, said.
John Marino, an organizer with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, said, “Our union supports workers regardless of their status. And we’re backing the Job Bridge program because it doesn’t leave any worker behind. All workers are entitled to a safe and dignified workplace.”
