About Brazilian Worker Center
Since 1995, the Brazilian Worker Center (BWC), formerly named the Brazilian Worker Center until 2015, has supported immigrants in defending and advancing their labor and immigrant rights. Our staff and board come from the community, and conduct most of our work, including board meetings, in Portuguese. A complete turnover in BWC leadership in 2010 brought new some directions, though our overall mission has remained very consistent. In 2010 as we became women-led, BWC extended our concerns with workers’ rights to include women, particularly domestic workers, where we have become a local, regional and national leader. We invest in strong coalition work to magnify our impacts in campaigns for policy reform and social justice. BWC has also become a center for policy-oriented research on the immigrant community (7 major projects since 2012). We have also become a nationally recognized center for Portuguese-language OSHA safety training for construction, cleaning, and cosmetology workers. Finally, we support immigrants’ becoming knowledgeable, active participants in their communities, through ESOL, leadership and civic engagement, and health literacy training. Today’s most pressing concerns are about economic opportunity and justice, and family and community security for immigrants. Our city’s vibrant economic boom still excludes immigrant workers, and we hope that new negotiations with organized labor can open pathways for their advancement. Defense of immigrant rights, and advocacy for immigration reform, have become more important on our menu of concerns since the change in national leadership in 2016, and the new, evolving nation-wide immigration enforcement regime it has brought to our country.
Locations
Primary Office Location
14 Harvard Avenue, 2nd Floor Allston MA 02134
(617) 783-8001
