Our Work

Bargaining for the Common Good
Bargaining for the Common Good is a nationwide network of unions and community groups working together in their localities to advance social, economic, and racial justice through collective bargaining and collective action.

WILL Empower
WILL Empower is a multifaceted initiative that convenes and trains a new generation of women labor leaders through apprenticeships, fellowships, cohorts of learning and mentoring, and public discourse focused on working women.

New Social Compact
KI leads an international series of conversations with scholars, activists, and young leaders to envision and advance a bold new social compact for the 21st century that centers working people’s needs and security over calls for austerity.

Labor Spring

Labor Spring is a diverse, nation-wide movement unifying workers, educators, environmentalists, activists, elected leaders, community members, and more in a multi-racial effort to demand justice on the job, racial equity, and maintain the public good.

Just Employment Policy Project
The Just Employment Policy Project brings together students, faculty, workers, and leaders from colleges across the country to support just employment policies that reflect Catholic social teaching, Jesuit values, and the dignity of workers.

Telling Workers’ Stories
The Kalmanovitz Initiative undertakes video, written, and audio oral history projects that collect and preserve the stories of workers and communities and brings their narratives to diverse audiences.

Anti-Sweatshop Sourcing
The Kalmanovitz Initiative supports work to develop and enact anti-sweatshop procurement standards in partnership with the Harrison Institute for Public Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Organizing Faith Communities
Drawing on Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and spirit of interfaith dialogue, KI organizes with churches, clergy, and the faith community to promote interfaith solidarity, worker justice, and care for the common good.

Race and Economic Empowerment Project (REEP)
The Race and Economic Empowerment Project combines KI’s research, advocacy, and convening work with ongoing efforts by labor, faith, and community groups to build a more equitable local economy.

Immigrant Rights in DC
KI is deeply engaged in efforts to advance immigrant rights in DC, especially on issues that impact immigrant workers and organizes in coalitions to support just and equitable policies for immigrant communities.

Solidarity Economy Workshop

The Solidarity Economy Workshop seeks alternative ways to center working people’s dignity and rights in the economy. SEW is inspired by the Pope Francis initiated Economy of Francesco.

Worker Health and Safety Trainings

The Kalmanovitz Initiative, through a grant from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is working to build a worker health and safety program that seeks to serve vulnerable workers in the DC Metro Area.

Immigration and Labor Project
The Immigration and Labor Program is a student program that joins with DC organizations to organize in solidarity with immigrant workers.

Research in Action Internship
The Research in Action Internship places students as researchers with top organizations advocating for working people.

Organizing Internship
The Organizing Internship places students as organizers with local community and labor groups advocating for working people.

Labor Capital Strategies
The Labor Capital Strategies Fellowship matches undergraduate students with top labor groups and progressive investment groups advocating for working people.

Worker Justice DC Alternative Break
Worker Justice DC Alternative Break immerses students in the DC community to work, learn, and reflect in solidarity with workers, community organizations, and policy efforts.

Labor Studies
Find professors and courses at Georgetown that touch on labor rights, economic justice, and social equity in line with the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s mission.

Visiting Scholars
KI welcomes Visiting Scholars to Georgetown to conduct research in line with our mission of advancing worker rights and economic justice.

Practitioner Fellows
The Practitioner Fellowship offers labor activists the opportunity to step back from work and think creatively about challenges facing workers.

Our Staff
Meet the people who make the Kalmanovitz Initiative run and carry out its projects, student programs, advocacy, and events.

Publications
The Kalmanovitz Initiative seeks to bridge the gap between scholars and practitioners by contributing to academic journals, issuing reports with community partners, and publishing conference proceedings. KI also hosts the Working Class Perspectives blog.

Labor History Today
KI partners with the DC Metro Council’s Union City Radio to produce Labor History Today, an award-winning podcast featuring activists, archivists and historians on key episodes of labor history.