Massachusetts Jobs with Justice is a majority Women and BIPOC led organization and we see our role in the movement not just as a bridging labor and community, but as an intersectional organization that sees how our collective liberation is tied together and is not won with simply one issue at a time. We believe in the self-determination of working people and as part of our values we push for the ability of working people to have economic justice in every aspect of their lives. We know that the only way for working people to realize justice in all aspects of their lives is when all our institutions and organizations recognize the value of Reproductive Justice. We trust workers in their collective power at work every day and we must trust their individual power to make decisions for themselves, about their bodies and their families.

We can not have a true economic democracy when most workers do not have access to adequate health care and reproductive services. The ability to make these choices is essential; bodily autonomy should not be afforded to just the wealthiest peoples in this country. We know workers are punished on the daily not just by our institutions but also by their employers for parenting, providing for, and caring for their children; our society insists on banning and restricting access to abortions and critical healthcare.The most marginalized workers -- immigrant, BIPOC, trans, and disabled women -- face the highest barriers to controlling their own lives with respect to reproductive health and how they are able to parent. Working people all deserve equal access to safe abortion, affordable contraceptives and comprehensive sex education, gender affirming care, as well as freedom from sexual violence -- and we get that by organizing around the interconnected root causes of reproductive injustice, from patriarchy to transphobia to systemic racism.

It has been almost 5 decades since Roe V. Wade and our gains can not stop there. We know and understand that the 1% not only aims to control our bodily autonomy but economic mobility. We can not deny that racism, capitalism, and patriarchy are all at play in keeping workers from having vibrant and full lives in which we can all partake in the wealth we create. It is no accident that across this country states work to restrict access to reproductive health services, push for right to work bills, privatize education, and slash the social safety net. The ruling class and corporate interests seek to control and oppress us by diminishing our rights and restricting our access to key institutions. They work tirelessly to control the narrative on what they believe our rights should be and in this way attempt to stoke fear and hate. We see our work is abolishing these barriers in order to create new pathways for workers to thrive.

It’s no mistake that corporate greed and their human owners attack our reproductive work and spew hateful rhetoric that leads to care workers being attacked on the job for providing vital services to marginalized communities across this country. They are the same people who introduce measures that keep workers in the gig economy from being treated as direct employees and at the same time intentionally push to maintain the tipped wage in the service industry, that is overwhelmingly BIPOC, LGTBQ, and Working class.

We as Massachusetts Jobs with Justice are committed to a future where Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Justice are not only a right but at their core a clear way in which to create a world where this is not an issue that divides us as workers but rather affirms our collective needs for care and embraces to meet the needs of all us in a dignified way.