The Consortium for Worker Education is seeking a detailed snapshot of how COVID-19 and the recession are affecting New Yorkers on the community-level, through a new survey of residents of the Queens neighborhood of Astoria.

CWE presented testimony about our network of workforce development community-based organizations (CBOs) and union partners to work to ameliorate the increasing numbers of unemployed New Yorkers.

New York City is home to 695,000 union members. What can they teach the rest of us?

The novel coronavirus has devastated New York’s restaurant industry, leaving hundreds of thousands of restaurant workers unemployed or underemployed, while presenting new challenges to those who remain on the job. At the peak of the pandemic, many restaurant workers have turned to the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) New York, a service organization that has spent nearly two decades organizing and supporting the city’s restaurant workers.

Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement listens to the community about what they say they need and develops responsive programs. In recent years, the organization has taken that to the next level by building leadership and advocacy skills so students can organize, advocate, and ensure that institutions meet their needs.

The latest report in a series from the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs and the Consortium for Worker Education shows that the coronavirus pandemic and associated recession continue to have a devastating impact on New York workers.

The Consortium for Worker Education and the New York City Central Labor Council launched CWE-CLC Workers Count2020 to ensure that New Yorkers get counted. Working with affiliate unions and community partners, CWE census outreach workers organized residents across the city to participate.

Immigrants are more likely to be essential workers and are among those hardest hit by COVID-related job losses, but these workers have been excluded from economic support programs passed by Congress in recent months.

With New York City’s economic reopening well under way, CWE census outreach workers are back in the streets, organizing for a complete census count.

A new report from the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs and the Consortium for Worker Education finds that the economic recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic is hitting low-income workers of color hardest.

On March 16th, HOPE paused onsite programming, but did not pause its work with adult jobseekers.

In response to new policies on social distancing to curb the spread of COVID-19, Per Scholas made the decision to close all campuses effective March 18, and moved all currently enrolled students into a remote learning setting. More than 500 students in 30 classes nationally transitioned to a virtual platform -- including 11 classes and over 200 students in New York City.

As COVID-19 shut down in-person education across the city, Make the Road NY has been able to maintain a full array of ESOL, Citizenship, and Know Your Rights classes for its membership. Make the Road NY staff was trained to use Zoom, and has conducted workshops on eviction prevention, immigration issues, and labor rights under COVID-19. Teachers use the platform to consult directly with students and to offer them practical support with respect to housing, food and financial relief.

CWE is partnering with economist James Parrott of the Center for New York City Affairs (CNYCA) at The New School to help New York policy makers and service providers develop programs to meet New Yorkers’ economic needs during this crisis.

Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow (OBT), a longtime partner in CWE’s Jobs to Build On program, works to end the cycle of poverty though education, job training, and employment. Those services have only become more necessary for their mostly-immigrant community during the COVID-19 public emergency.

YAMA's bodega members are essential businesses that have continued to operate during the pandemic. Over 70 of their members have contracted COVID-19, and many workers have lost their lives. YAMA has since launched a health education campaign and distributed bodega safety kits of masks, gloves, and sanitizing products to their members.

The COVID-19 shutdown hit just as New York’s community organizations were launching campaigns to get residents counted in the 2020 census. Despite these headwinds, a complete count remains essential for each New York community to get their fair share of federal funding and full political representation. CWE has shifted from planned in-person outreach to phone and text banks, and other online outreach to make sure the New Yorkers who are usually undercounted in the census are able to make their voices heard.