Detroit's First Private Community Benefits Agreement!

Sugar Law’s clients the West Grand Boulevard Collaborative (WGBC) negotiated and signed the first community benefits agreement in the City of Detroit reached between a private developer and a community group. Much congrats to all involved!

“WGBC also negotiated two Letters of Understanding with Henry Ford Health System around the new Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion and a separate warehouse. Thanks to those agreements, the hospital recently hosted a job fair in which 47 residents were hired, according to Jan Harrington-Davis, director of Employee/Labor Relations for HFHS” Full Story .

The Sugar Law Center is proud to work with WGBC, providing ongoing technical support and negotiations assistance to WGBC throughout the process of reaching this agreement and on their prior LOUs.

Community Benefits 3.0: A Path towards Racial and Economic Justice

On September 14, the Sugar Law Center, along with our co-sponsors at the People’s Platform, UAW, and SEIU will be hosting our third bi-annual community benefits conference.

Since 2014, Milwaukee, Nashville and other cities across the country have been winning affordable housing, childcare, and living wage jobs in exchange for the millions of dollars in public investments in their communities. Detroiter is the nation’s largest black city and Detroiters are long overdue for their fair share- now is the time to lean into the Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) Movement.

Learn how you and your neighbors can become advocates for fair and equitable development and real community benefits.

Sugar Law Combats Wage Theft

Anthony Paris, lead attorney at the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice in Detroit, agreed that low-wage workers, especially immigrants, are reluctant to rock the boat. …Lauren Rosen, one of Paris’s clients, did decide to rock the boat. She said in an interview with WhoWhatWhy that she volunteered to complain to management about stolen tips on behalf of herself and co-workers because “I’ve got no kids, no mortgage.” …Full story

Seeking Accountability For Victims of Unemployment Insurance Fraud Scheme

In our ongoing fight on behalf of the victims of state officials and private vendors automate system for (falsely) charging fraud against unemployed insurance claimants, we obtained a great ruling from the federal appeals court in Cincinnati. “The unanimous decision from the three-member Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel came with a strong rebuke for the state employees who attempted to blame the faulty program for the issue even though they were the ones “implementing, overseeing and continuing” the program.” Full story.

Stopping Exploitation of Students by For-Profit Schools

A judge has cleared the way for possibly thousands of people to be paid for work performed while they were students at a [for profit vocational schools] ….Students [were required to] clean floors, restocked products and washed towels … tasks that weren’t directly related to their education at the Douglas J Aveda Institute, U.S. District Judge Judith Levy said Monday. She said those students can be considered employees under federal law. The amount of money they might receive hasn’t been determined. “They’re entitled to be compensated,” John Philo, an attorney for former students, said Wednesday. “The next step will be class certification and showing this is happening through all the locations. It could be as high as 5,000 to 6,000 students.” Full story