Participants gather at 2019 advocacy event led by the Kalmanovitz Initiative
Category: COVID-19 Resilience & Response, Giving News

Title:$4M Grant from Ford Foundation Helps Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative Support Working Families

Transforming collective bargaining

After publishing a study in 2013 entitled “Bargaining for the Future” that called for revision of 20th century collective bargaining, the Kalmanovitz Initiative gathered thought leaders from the union movement and community organizing networks to discuss its conclusions. It followed up that effort in May 2014, convening the founding conference of the Bargaining for the Common Good network.

The network has grown in the years since and is now co-hosted by the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s partners, the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) of Rutgers University and the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE).

“We are proud to support the Kalmanovitz Initiative in its ongoing effort to build worker power towards a more just economy,” said Sarita Gupta, director of Ford Foundation’s Future of Work(ers) program. “We believe all workers are essential, and the Bargaining for the Common Good project helps drive that vision, where working people are building a more equitable, democratic, inclusive, and sustainable economy not only for themselves, but society at large.”

In 2020, Bargaining for the Common Good hosted virtual training events involving over 100 organizations. The network’s priorities in the year ahead will include:

  • Addressing the impact of COVID-19 on workers and working families, and protecting labor standards from being eroded by the pandemic and associated economic downturn;
  • Bringing labor and community organizations together to fight for solutions to the growing housing crisis that working-class families face in the nation’s urban centers;
  • Pushing for humane and democratic responses to the budget crises that are expected to beset state and local governments as a result of the pandemic.

Learn more about the Kalmanovitz Initiative

The Kalmanovitz Initiative was established in 2009 to develop creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives in a changing economy. It draws on Georgetown’s distinctive identity—its commitment to intellectual excellence, grounding in the Catholic and Jesuit traditions, history of inter-religious cooperation, global reach, and prominence as an arena of policy debate in the nation’s capital—to advance prosperity, economic justice, and respect for the dignity of labor. In undertaking this mission, the Kalmanovitz Initiative carries on the tradition of the Catholic labor schools that flourished in the first half of the 20th century promoting Catholic social teaching on labor and the economy.

To learn more about Bargaining for the Common Good and the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s partner organizations—including CIWO and ACRE—visit the Bargaining for the Common Good website.