Standing With Workers. Winning for Communities.
What Are Strike Ready Committees?
Strike Ready Committees are local teams organized within Jobs with Justice coalitions to prepare our community to stand in powerful solidarity with workers who take bold action, whether that means strikes, walkouts, or other forms of collective action. These committees build the infrastructure, leadership, and trained capacity necessary to ensure that when workers stand up, they never stand alone.
This model is designed to mobilize a meaningful portion of our community (aiming for at least 3.5% of neighbors per area) to support workers, amplify their struggles, and build durable power that lasts beyond any single strike.
Across the country, JWJ coalitions will launch and sustain these committees at the local level, while National Jobs With Justice provides coordination, shared learning, tools, templates, and training so that our work is local in power but national in strength.
Through a national Strike Ready cohort, we can prevent siloing, share lessons, coordinate strategy, and amplify each other’s victories.
What a Strike Ready Committee Does
• Support Workers in Action
Provide hands-on solidarity for strikes, walkouts, and direct worker action.
• Train & Develop Leaders
Build critical skills in de-escalation, legal rights, strike support, fundraising, action planning, and power analysis.
• Build Rapid Response Infrastructure
Maintain systems for picket-line support, rides, supplies, safety coordination, and strike/bail fund support.
• Mobilize Community Power
Organize solidarity actions, amplify worker struggles through media outreach, and build supportive public networks.
• Engage in Mutual Aid & Community Defense
Coordinate mutual aid and defensive solidarity—especially when workers or unions face attacks, retaliation, or attempts to undermine organizing efforts—ensuring that our community protects one another materially, legally, logistically, and publicly.
• Grow Long-Term Capacity
Serve as an ongoing on-ramp for new organizers and a training ground for current leaders to grow and strengthen our movement.
Why Do We Need Strike Ready Committees?
Around the world we see the same pattern:
Intersectional social movements win more and win big when organized labor is at the table.
Experience shows that movements based on political or ideological identity fracture and fail, while movements rooted in the shared identity of the working class build real power. It is that shared identity that binds us, allowing us to look beyond our differences and unite in common struggle. This is how we bring together all workers to build power that is both broad and durable.
In other countries, successful general strikes, democratic resistance movements, and worker-led uprisings are grounded in a combination of labor infrastructure, rapid mobilization capacity, and community solidarity.
Strike Ready Committees will give us the infrastructure to do the same here:
- Labor brings structure, power, and legitimacy.
- Community brings scale, numbers, and energy.
Together, that is a winning formula.
Division of Responsibility
National Jobs with Justice Will:
- Provide toolkits, templates, and ongoing training
- Offer coaching and technical support to local organizers
- Convene national calls so committees can share strategies, tactics, and lessons
Local Coalitions (Like ESSN) Will:
- Recruit and sustain Strike Ready Committees
- Hold regular meetings and launch solidarity actions
- Develop leadership roles to build long-term movement capacity
- Expand the skills, numbers, and effectiveness of the committee
Project Timeline
2025:
Proposal presented to JWJ network; toolkit development; planning phase.
2026:
Committees launch and begin coordinated training and solidarity operations.
2028:
A nationwide network of Strike Ready Committees capable of mobilizing large-scale, rapid, effective community support for workers facing corporate attacks, anti-democratic actions, and authoritarian overreach.
Together, We Build a Future Where Workers Don’t Stand Alone.
If you are a union, community group, student organization, or activist interested in participating, email essn@solidaritynetwork.org, let’s build the Strike Ready Committee we need, together.