So far, our El Hormiguero Volunteer Group has grown by 7 new members, 6 of them joining our industrial research team and the other joining our communications team. The industrial researching team dedicates itself to researching, in detail, all aspects of various targets, as in they get all the info about potential places where organizing may occur or is occurring. The team has organized self-trainings, where professional industrial researchers give them tips and tricks that they are currently using in national/international campaigns. The communications team organizes volunteer events, such as community socials, art builds, and panels. The team’s focus is to build our community, by cultivating current members and bringing in new ones and establishing partnerships with other local organizations such as Laundry Workers Center, Street Vendors Project, Restaurant Workers Union, and many more similar groups. 

The group continues to hold weekly general meetings, where we discuss new organizing updates throughout NYC, learn how to be better allies, and onboard new folks into our community. If you’d like to participate in a meeting, please join us on zoom, we have a meeting every Wednesday at 7 pm, sign up here! 🐜 You can also check out a quick summary of last season’s events on our El Hormiguero Seasonal Zine, a new program from the El Hormiguero Communications Team, here, and stay tuned next for the Winter edition! ☃️

We are planning a few events this coming month. At the end of the month, March, we will be having an in-person event. We hope to have a few of our coalition partners put on small workshops for El Hormiguero. We are also planning a Movie Night Social, where we will highlight a labor campaign, and have a discussion about the different tactics used that we can apply or avoid in future campaigns. Make sure to pay attention to our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok to find out when those and other events are happening! Wait, hold up, did you say TikTok? 🤯That’s right, we got TikTok! Our TikTok recently launched, so go ahead and follow us there and give us some love 🥺You’ll find some highlights from last month’s panel, plus stuff we go to weekly, and much more. 

We also recently joined the Secure Jobs NYC coalition. Which is a coalition supporting the Secure Jobs Act (Intro 837), which would require employers to provide:

1. 14 days notice and a written explanation when terminating an employee 
2. Prohibit the use of electronic monitoring in discipline and discharge decisions
3. Implement a progressive discipline system to give employees the opportunity to receive feedback and improve work performance before being terminated. 

It aims to fight against New York City’s at-will employment system that allows employers to terminate workers at any time without a fair reason or for no reason at all. The new Fast Food Workers Just Cause Law is similar to this, but lacks the reach that the Secure Jobs Act would provide. While this law wouldn’t eliminate all the issues that workers in the food factory industry experience, it would provide some relief. Stay tuned with updates on our social media platforms.