CWE Publishes COVID Compendium

Four years ago today, the first New Yorker was diagnosed with COVID-19. It marked the beginning of a major crisis for the city that would require a huge response from the government agencies and community organizations that New Yorkers depend on. The Consortium for Worker Education had been there for New Yorkers before. Following 9/11 and during the Great Recession, CWE and our network of community organizations and labor unions supported unemployed workers and their communities. The COVID-19 pandemic would present new challenges, but we had built the infrastructure to respond. 

Today, we are releasing The Consortium for Worker Education Responds to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a compendium that brings together the work of our network to respond to the pandemic, which you can read in full on our website. Over the next several months, we will highlight the work that New York City’s unions and community organizations undertook to support city workers through the health crisis, the corresponding recession, and the grief and sense of dislocation that the pandemic left behind. 

The COVID-19 pandemic will unfortunately not be the last time that New York City is tested. One key lesson from the pandemic is that we must continue supporting the community institutions that supported workers through the crisis, to ensure that those organizations will be strong enough to support us through the next crisis.