ABOUT
ESWA is a 100% volunteer-run organizing drive of low-income service, temporary, part-time and seasonal workers and their families
Who was Sojourner Truth
Featured in ESWA’s logo, Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883), a domestic worker, was a tireless advocate and fighter for the plight of the most exploited and marginalized. Herself a freed slave, she fought for the abolition of slavery, as well as the rights of African American women who were denied the right to vote even after the formal end of slavery. Sojourner Truth believed and taught others that it was possible to create a new world through their collective actions.
11-Point Membership Benefit Program
ESWA’s 11-point membership benefit program is built by and for members. It works to meet material needs as expressed by ESWA’s membership council, where any member can have input into the working of their benefit program. The benefits are free of charge and keep us on our feet while we organize to gain control over our living and working conditions, and bring about an end to poverty once and for all.
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Food & Clothing
Non-perishable food and clothing items are available for members upon request to aid with immediate needs members have. Members can also enroll in a year-round, budget-savings program, which includes weekly fresh grocery distributions and seasonal clothing and school supply distributions.
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Medical & Dental
Volunteer doctors, dentists and other medical professionals donate their services to see members free-of-charge for medical check-ups in their offices, or to present medical education and information sessions on medical topics like nutrition and how to survive extreme heat conditions.
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Legal
“Know Your Law” sessions conducted by volunteer attorneys present information about legal topics of interest to low-income workers as requested by ESWA members. Legal advice is provided to a requesting member privately in legal advice sessions with a volunteer attorney accompanied by a volunteer lay advocate to assist with the next steps of the attorney’s advice.
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A Whole Lot More!
Our 11-Point Benefit Program includes financial advocacy for members facing utility shutoffs or evictions, alcohol information, job referrals, information and referral to other available resources and much more!
Seasonal Campaigns
Summer Survival
Fall & Holidays
Spring Into Action
Winter Survival
About ESWA
Since our founding in 1974, EASTERN SERVICE WORKERS ASSOCIATION (ESWA) in Northern New Jersey has signed up over 30,000 members who work as temporary workers in New Jersey’s sprawling warehouse and distribution industry, as well as service workers, domestic workers, “gig” workers and home health aides.
These workers perform labor essential to the economy, yet their pay leaves them vulnerable to eviction and hunger, lack of access to medical and legal services, and deprivation of other basic necessities. Decades of government policies have aided the increasing concentration of wealth at the top while condemning more and more workers to poverty wages and job loss.
In light of these conditions, low-income service and temporary workers are uniting, along with local and regional businesses, students, religious and civic organizations and others who are concerned, so together we can fight for an economy that works for all of us.
Founding ESWA members decided that ESWA would be 100% volunteer-run, and would neither seek nor accept government or other strings-attached funding. With so many working people living on the edge, ESWA’s strategy included developing a self-help membership benefit program, built on principles of self-help through members participating, with the alliance of others in the community. The benefit program delivers day-to-day necessities, teaches basic organizing skills to all who wish to learn, and provides a measure of stability to those whose precarious circumstances impact their ability to play an active role in organizing for change.
Benefits include emergency food, preventive health care through volunteer medical professionals, free legal education and advice through volunteer attorneys, and more (see our 11-point Benefit Program).
ESWA members have fought denials of health care, utility rate hikes, obstacles to employment, and much more. With service and temporary workers suffering from dangerous heat waves, and poor air quality caused by human-induced climate change, we’ve demanded that the government act to stop and reverse climate change. And we’ve spoken out against policies of those in power that help billion-dollar corporations, and that keep those of us in the productive economy divided and fighting each other.
Only by organizing together, starting with those, such as service and temporary workers, who endure the harshest consequences of our economy and the policies that shape it, can we gain the strength to make real change that benefits all of us!
Building Upon 50 Years of Organizing
1974 —Volunteer organizers, Rutgers professors and graduate students began EASTERN SERVICE WORKERS ASSOCIATION (ESWA) to address the growing need for organization by the area’s poorest workers: temporary workers, domestic servants, day laborers and other service workers. By 1975, ESWA opened its office at 97 Church Street in New Brunswick and by June had enough volunteers to begin the membership drive with door-to-door canvassing and house meetings in New Brunswick.
1977 — By 1977, ESWA had enlisted over two thousand membership families and many took on leadership roles in overseeing the benefits and membership drive.
1979 — By 1979 ESWA identified the beginning of a nationwide trend to reshape the workforce through using temporary workers as expendable, lower-paid replacements for higher-paid union workers. By 2015, the nation had more temporary workers than ever before: 2.7 million. There were more than 30 temporary agencies within a two-mile radius of New Brunswick.
Members of the Northern New Jersey Workers Benefit Council (WBC) decided on tactics for collecting information and making an analysis of the options they had. The WBC delegates helped members form a Temporary Workers Information Service (TWIS) and aided temporary workers in seeking legal recourse through the private employment agency section of the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs.
TWIS members organized a series of picket lines, supported by the WBC, protesting the failure of the state Attorney General’s office to enforce laws regulating temporary agencies. Workers wore black masks to protest the agencies’ practice of blacklisting any workers who raised grievances with the agency.
1982 — ESWA issued a call to “End the Winter Death Toll” following a cold snap reported as the coldest week of the century. Hundreds of people joined a funeral march through the main streets of New Brunswick to remember J.B. Roby, an ESWA member and temporary worker who was homeless and had died of exposure while squatting in one of the dozens of condemned buildings slated for demolition under development plans of Devco (New Brunswick Development Corp.). ESWA began a Winter Survival Campaign including house-to-house canvassing, utility advocacy and Winter Watch for checking on housebound shut-in members during extreme weather.
1988 — The City of New Brunswick and Devco announced plans to close down New Brunswick Homes (more commonly known as the Memorial Parkway Projects), a HUD subsidized complex of four high-rise apartment buildings off Route 18 near the Raritan River. Workers Benefit Council members formed a Tenants, Residents and Homeowners Committee and demanded that the city follow the law mandating relocation assistance before condemning the buildings which housed low-income workers and disabled people. As a result, the city delayed the demolition for 13 years, during which time they ensured that all of the residents were relocated.
1996 — After a major flood hit Bound Brook, ESWA was asked by local business people to assist low-income residents who were devastated and were not getting help from insurance or FEMA. ESWA mobilized a Disaster Relief Unit (DRU). In 1999, Hurricane Floyd hit and Bound Brook was again flooded, this time much worse than in 1996. ESWA members re-inspired the DRU and mobilized massive collections and distributions of food, clothing and furniture, in conjunction with door-to-door canvassing. Bound Brook was again flooded in 2007 and 2012 and ESWA was there to help again.
2000 — ESWA began weekly clothing distributions out of Elks Superior Lodge at 150 Baldwin Street.
2001 — ESWA expanded medical and dental benefits. Dr. Kayode Oladeji began to see ESWA members requesting medical benefits at no charge through ESWA’s preventive medical benefit, and invited ESWA to a Nigerian doctors’ organizational event in New Brunswick to meet additional doctors. Dr. Michael Neuman began to see members requesting dental care as part of ESWA’s non-emergency dental benefit after ESWA organizers met him on a business canvass. Dr. Euton Laing began monthly general medical sessions and later joined the Organizing Committee.
2006 — Delegations of ESWA organizers, members and volunteers attended and testified at a Board of Public Utilities (BPU) hearing to oppose yet another rate hike for PSE&G and call for a rate reduction, kicking off a decades-long campaign to demand affordable and clean energy as a human right.
