Our Policy & Advocacy

How We Are Reimagining The System

A good job should be within reach for everyone, regardless of where they start or where they’ve been. But it’s not that simple.

For generations, the systems and policies intended to serve us — including workforce, education, housing, and criminal justice — have created an inherent set of disadvantages for people of color.

That’s why we work with lawmakers and community leaders to redesign policies with a racially equitable and just lens. We aim to improve workforce services and skill-building programs, eliminate systemic barriers to employment, and foster employment access that benefits those who need it the most.

Employment equity serves us all

• Employment equity serves us all •

Speakers educating during Attendees sitting at a table listening in during Chicago Jobs Council training session

Attendees sitting at a table listening in during Chicago Jobs Council workforce convos

How Do We Build An Anti-Racist
Workforce Development System?

The workforce system should prioritize every worker's future financial stability, career pathway, and economic security. It must honor the humanity of all people, be inclusive, race-explicit, address the larger economic system and center those most impacted by systemic racial injustice.

In our commitment to building an anti-racist workforce development system, our work prioritizes policies that build transformative relationships between people and systems, focus on equitable access, provide quality jobs, and remove funding obstacles that inhibit progress.

Changing Systems

We focus our policy and advocacy around improving overall labor and employment issues within the workforce ecosystem. We work to improve how the various laws, policies and systems within workforce align and communicate to ultimately benefit the job seeker.

See How We’re Changing Systems

Eliminating Barriers To Employment

CJC works to improve access to good jobs, wrap around workforce and employment benefit services, improve skill-building programs, and foster quality job creation that benefits the people who need a job most.

See How We’re Eliminating Barriers

Forging Equitable Career Pathways

A job should provide fair wages and opportunities for professional growth. We work to ensure that people seeking to expand their basic skills can access education, training, and supportive services.   We work to ensure jobs specifically for economically disadvantaged groups. As we adapt our economy to a changing climate, it must also benefit those who have historically been excluded from economic growth.

See How We’re Forging Pathways

Increasing Workforce System Funding

Investing in all workers, employers gain from a more educated workforce. Structuring funding at the Federal and State level that is consistent, adaptable and relevant to the changing needs of the economy safeguards everyone’s professional progress no matter what situational changes they encounter during their careers.   We also believe that funding social enterprise, entrepreneurship, and worker-owned businesses creates unique opportunities for people who have trouble securing stable jobs.

See How We’re Increasing Funding

Our Advocacy Approach

Convene and coalesce working groups and stakeholders to co-create an equitable, anti-racist workforce development system.

Direct systems change advocacy at the city, state, and federal level.

Educate and mobilize the community, people impacted by the policies we seek to change, and coalition members to amplify our shared agenda.

40+ Years of Policy & Advocacy

1982

Released a review of tax-subsidized economic development and public works projects in Chicago.
1985

Took a lead role in the passage and the implementation of The McLaughlin Ordinance.
1997

Shaped development of the Federal Workforce Investment Act and influenced the creation of “one-stop centers” in Chicago.
2000

Released a series of reports to inform welfare and workforce development policy implementation.
2005

Released Big Shoulders, Big Challenges—a landmark analysis of Chicago’s public workforce development funding.
2006

Launched the Illinois Works for the Future campaign with other Illinois advocacy organizations.
2014

CJC conducts neighborhood analysis and identified 4 neighborhoods that are most disconnected from employment and resources. License suspension is a specific challenge named by community based organizations.
2015

CJC writes various blog posts and hosts discussions about License Suspension.
2016

Transit Table convened for the first time and by the end of the year Transit Table agreed to advocate for eliminating license suspension for most non-moving violations.
2017

Heartland Alliance lead the Transit Table in preparing a bill to eliminate license suspension for most non-driving violations now known as the License to Work Act. (See HB3177 and SB1614)
2019

License to Work Act passes ILGA
2020

Governor Pritzker signs License to Work which ended suspensions for failure to pay parking tickets, impacting 75,000 Illinois driving records.
2021

License to Work publishes the Shifting Suspensions in Illinois Study launching the work on Failure to Appear Legislation. More than 100,000 people with driver’s license suspensions in Illinois for “failure to appear” in traffic court.
2022

CJC drafts legislative alternative to failure to appear - HB277, in partnership with the Transit Table and government leaders.
2024

We celebrate the passage of HB277 with the Skills Agenda Coalition, where we partnered with the Transit Table to end license suspensions for minor traffic offenses related to failure to appear in court.