ESF Launches Fast Food Worker Pilot Program
The SEIU Education & Support Fund (ESF) is proud to announce the launch of a new Fast Food Worker pilot program in collaboration with SEIU. This groundbreaking initiative will deliver bilingual, interactive Know Your Rights trainings to fast food workers across Los Angeles County, empowering workers with the tools they need to protect themselves and their coworkers from wage theft, unsafe working conditions, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.
To help launch this work, we are thrilled to share that ESF has been awarded a California Workplace Outreach Project (CWOP) grant from the California Department of Industrial Relations to support this work. This funding will allow us to bring Know Your Rights trainings, and support to thousands of fast food workers in one of the state’s highest-risk industries. Our program will also provide workers with the information they need to access essential benefits such as paid sick leave, paid family leave, pregnancy disability, and workers’ compensation.
We are also excited to announce that Marisa Salas has joined ESF as our Director of the Fast Food Workers Training Program, overseeing the implementation of this pilot. Marisa is an immigrant from Mexico and a labor rights leader with over 20 years of experience in community organizing and worker education. Based in Los Angeles, she was at the forefront of the national Fight for $15 campaign for 12 years, training and developing worker leaders in California, Colorado, Iowa, Arizona, and Chicago. In San José, she led a campaign that mobilized hundreds of fast-food workers to go on strike and expose widespread abuses in the industry, including wage theft, sexual harassment, health and safety violations, and workplace violence.
Important work has already begun - please find Fast Food Worker Know Your Rights training resources for Santa Clara County here and Los Angeles County can be found here.