The GBLS Workers’ Rights Unit fights with and on behalf of low-wage and immigrant workers to enforce workplace rights, receive work-related benefits, and obtain work-related immigration protections. We provide direct representation to low-income workers, and we also litigate and advocate for broad changes to improve work-related rights and benefits for low-wage workers across Massachusetts. The Workers’ Rights Unit’s advocacy takes place in close collaboration with worker centers and other community-based organizations and allies.
Direct Client Services
The Workers' Rights Unit provides legal advice, assistance, and representation to low-income workers in cases involving:
- Unemployment benefits, including related job training benefits
- Wage theft (for example, unpaid wages, minimum wage and overtime pay violations, and independent contractor misclassification)
- Paid family & medical leave; sick leave
- Discrimination and harassment
- Employer retaliation against workers for asserting workplace rights or for seeking work-related benefits
- Immigration protections (U and T visas) for survivors of workplace-related crimes or labor trafficking
Read more about the direct client services we provide.
Community Partnerships
The Workers' Rights Unit collaborates with, supports, and represents many different community-based organizations, including workers centers based in many of Greater Boston’s immigrant communities. We also partner with a wide range of worker and immigrant rights advocacy organizations, government agencies, unions, members of the private bar, and law schools.
Through these relationships and partnerships, we maximize the quantity and quality of direct representation for individuals and the impact of our advocacy efforts, and we ensure that our priorities reflect the needs and desires of the communities that we serve.
Read more about our community partnerships.
Impact Advocacy
Representing individual clients with employment-related problems, and our ongoing collaborations with on-the-ground community-based organizations, gives our legal staff knowledge and understanding of the most pressing changes needed to improve the lives of low-income workers and their families. We use this knowledge to advocate for changes to laws, rules, regulations, and policies at local, state, and national levels; to litigate cases with broad impact; to file amicus briefs in other court cases important to low-wage workers; and to provide legal support for our community partners’ organizing and leadership development efforts.