Building Dignity in Vermont

Vermont Construction Company – one of the largest and fastest-growing builders in the state – has committed to join a program setting labor and housing standards for construction workers. The Building Dignity and Respect Program will soon provide enforceable rights protections for the hundreds of workers on Vermont Construction sites.

In case you missed it, check out the press release announcing this exciting new partnership to protect workers’ rights!

On January 27th, dozens of construction workers gathered in the headquarters of Vermont Construction to witness the signing of the agreement of cooperation. Migrant Justice leader and construction worker José Ignacio, company president David Richards, and Doug Mork – Director of the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council – addressed the assembled journalists and supporters. Then, to raucous applause, each worker passed to the front to add their name to the accord, signalling the community’s commitment to bring Building Dignity to Vermont. 

The announcement received widespread coverage from Vermont’s press corps, with reporting on news sites, in magazines, on TV news and on NPR stations across the region. The press conference was streamed in its entirety on public access television.

The agreement kicks off a process to adapt the Minnesota-based Building Dignity and Respect Program to the Vermont construction industry. The Program is an example of “worker-driven social responsibility,” the social change model pioneered by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Over the past few decades, marginalized workers in corporate supply chains or labor contracting chains have created programs using this model to win enforceable rights and achieve greater economic justice, from the CIW’s Fair Food Program for tomatoes and other grow crops, to Migrant Justice’s own Milk with Dignity Program in the dairy industry.

Nearly ten years ago, the CIW and Migrant Justice formed the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network alongside others to develop the model globally and support more worker organizations to create their own adaptations. One of those organizations was Minnesota-based workers’ center CTUL. Over the years, Migrant Justice members have traveled to the Twin Cities to share the lessons of Milk with Dignity and aid CTUL’s construction workers in creating their own worker-driven social responsibility program. The result: the Building Dignity and Respect Program.

With Vermont Construction Company’s commitment, Building Dignity is now coming to Vermont. This is a story that would not have been possible without the years of relationship-building and cross-pollination between immigrant workers across organization, industry, and region. It is a true testament to the power of workers’ broad vision of human rights organizing.

And the commitment could not come at a better time. As Vermont’s immigrant community grows and diversifies, many recently-arriving families are finding work in the construction industry, while some long-time dairy workers leave the farm for construction jobs. Migrant Justice is adapting our work to meet the changing demographics of our community, and the implementation of Building Dignity in Vermont will be a key component of our work in the years to come. 

Just as Milk with Dignity has secured rights for hundreds of farmworkers and transformed the dairy industry in the northeast over the past seven years, now Building Dignity will do the same in Vermont’s construction industry. And we hope that the agreement with Vermont Construction Company will be just the beginning: Migrant Justice calls on other builders to follow suit and join the Building Dignity and Respect Program