The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) is an alliance of labor, community, and environmental organizations working together for safe, secure jobs, and a healthy, sustainable environment. WEC links workers and communities through education and training, technical assistance, grassroots organizing, and public policy campaigns. Through this work, WEC seeks to demonstrate the value of dialogue, collaboration, and joint action by worker, community, and environmental partners.

Description:
WEC has six interrelated core program areas: 1) The Right to Know and Act to Prevent Toxic Exposures; 2) Chemical Safety and Security; 3) Environmental Justice for People of Color and Low-Income Communities; 4) Healthy School Environments; 5) Workplace Safety and Health; and 6) Jobs and the Environment. Program area activities include training, organizing grassroots demonstration projects, technical assistance, media outreach, and public policy advocacy.

History:
Environmental and labor activists in the NJ Right-to-Know Coalition, which won the nation’s strongest state right-to-know law in 1983, formed the Work Environment Council in 1986. Since then, WEC has promoted community and worker use of this law, developed innovative “right to act” strategies to prevent pollution, and advocated for new policies to address environmental injustice, hazardous conditions in public schools and jobs versus environment conflicts. Between 1986 and 1996, WEC programs were coordinated with the NJ Industrial Union Council, AFL-CIO, the state’s second largest labor federation, and with the NJ Right-to-Know and Act Coalition, a network of environmental, community, public health, and labor groups. Although an independent entity, WEC functioned as the educational-organizing adjunct to both groups.

In 1997, WEC began to develop a more independent and broad-based strategy. We expanded to involve more labor, community, and environmental organizations and hired two full time staff. WEC spearheaded the Justice for Jobs, Health, and Environment campaign, with demands to Governor Christine Whitman on right-to-know, right to act, environmental justice, and the risks of downsizing to health. This campaign involved many labor, community, environmental justice, and environmental organizations. In 1999, after extensive discussion and planning by WEC’s Board of Directors, we began a transition to a democratically structured, statewide membership coalition, building on our base in the labor movement and our work with environmental and community organizations.

Contact person: Debra Coyle, (phone), (email)
Office fax number: 609-695-4200

Address:

142 West State Street, 3rd Floor Trenton, NJ 08608 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.njwec.org