Executive Director

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha / Center for Workers United in the Struggle

Summary: CTUL is excited to welcome our next Executive Director and is seeking a highly collaborative and strategic leader with experience building worker power through organizing, leadership development, and transformative policy change. Join our talented team as we continue to build a movement to win racial, gender, and economic justice.

Location: Hybrid plus limited travel. Our office is located in Minneapolis, MN. Staff must be residents of MN.

Compensation: The annual salary is up to $100,000 plus a generous benefits package. FTE based on a 40/hr work week.

About CTUL

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha / Center for Workers United in the Struggle (CTUL) is Minnesota-based a worker center and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization where workers organize, educate, and empower each other to fight for a voice in their workplaces and in their communities. We partner with other organizations and leaders to build a movement to win racial, gender, and economic justice. We identify the root causes of injustice and work to shift the balance of power between those who have it and those who don’t to improve the lives of our communities for present and future generations.

We believe in the power, brilliance, creativity, and strength of communities of color and of low-wage workers. By organizing together and relying on one another, we:

Win specific policies that improve the lives of low-wage workers;
Create worker-led enforcement mechanisms so that policies can have a meaningful, concrete, and long-term impact; and
Transform systems of exploitation towards interdependence and liberation.

Since our founding in 2007, CTUL evolved a unique approach to organizing with the most vulnerable workers, and together with our community have evolved an effective set of strategies that are making powerful changes across the Twin Cities metro area. This work has improved the lives of thousands of workers by winning back over $7 million dollars in stolen wages and winning wage increases that, going forward, will bring $883 million dollars per year back into the poorest communities in the Twin Cities.

Our annual budget is $3.2 million and we have a talented team of 24 staff members and are governed by a Board of Directors who generously share their leadership and lived experience to help inform our strategic direction. CTUL works in close partnership with multiple groups and leaders whose work intersects with economic justice, including labor unions, policymakers, grassroots movement organizations, philanthropists, and others who share in our commitment to building worker power. Learn more about our work at: ctul.net

Position Summary

In deep collaboration with our Board of Directors and staff, the Executive Director will create and lead a vision for the organization based on its mission, core organizing principles, and theory of change. They will oversee the administration and programs of the organization, ensuring the sound management and fiscal health of CTUL. They will serve as a leader in our field, representing CTUL across our partnerships and inspiring others to join us in realizing our vision for economic justice.

Responsibilities

Leadership, Governance, Organizational Development & Learning

Develop and operationalize an organization-wide vision, ensuring that the organization has the plans, policies, and staffing in place to make progress towards our mission, both in the near-term and long-term. Ensure ongoing program excellence; develop evaluation methods and support ongoing learning and planning.
Take a continuous learning approach to our field, tracking significant developments and trends in labor, using this knowledge to identify innovations and strengthen our strategies.
Provide direct supervision for the Executive Leadership team, which includes 4 members, engaging with their expertise and talents to ensure that all work across the organization connects back to core values and strategic frameworks.
Regular check-ins with the Executive Assistant who provides dedicated administrative support to the Executive Director and to the organization.
Develop, maintain, and support an effective Board of Directors, supporting recruitment and engagement efforts to ensure that CTUL has a strong and healthy governance structure.
Maintain a highly collaborative organizational culture that attracts, retains, and motivates a diverse staff team and supports workers and coalition members to succeed together.
Work with management and the staff union to ensure that the collective bargaining agreement is correctly implemented and that the ongoing relationship with the staff union is positive and productive.

External Partnerships, Communications & Fundraising

Ensure the development and implementation of fundraising and communications plans that are compelling and motivate others to be active and support CTUL and our campaigns.
Establish and maintain collaborative relationships with external partners including community groups, unions, nonprofit organizations, policymakers, funders, and other key strategic allies.
Serve as CTUL’s executive spokesperson, representing the programs and point of view of the organization to coalition members, agencies, organizations, media, and the general public.

Finance and Administration

Understand the needs and requirements for ensuring sound organizational management across all functions, including finance, HR/people management, IT etc.—building and maintaining infrastructure as the organization grows–with an eye towards proactively mitigating risk.
Maintain the fiscal integrity of CTUL, partnering with the Board of Directors and the Finance Lead to ensure the annual budget is developed and approved, that the organization is operating within the approved budget, and that fiscal practices comply with generally accepted accounting principles.

Qualifications

10+ years experience in a field related to economic and racial justice (e.g. labor, immigrant rights, housing justice, climate justice etc.) with knowledge of labor and movement work.
Enthusiasm for CTUL’s mission and grounding in community organizing. Demonstrated commitment to building power with people of color.
Experience in developing and managing budgets, administration, and general operations in a nonprofit setting.
Strong team management skills, managing staff with both confidence and compassion; experience bringing out the best in others through supervision and mentoring.
Understanding of the fundamentals of fundraising and experience with development work, either as a lead or as a contributor.
Deeply collaborative and experienced working across lines of difference to identify shared goals and move groups towards powerful outcomes. Ability to navigate conflict in a generative way that gets results and strengthens organizational culture and impact.
Strong verbal and written communications skills with the ability to effectively communicate information and ideas across a wide variety of audiences (eg. low-wage workers, elected officials, funders etc.) in a way that is accessible, clear, and compelling.
Possesses a strong and complex political and social analysis, experience putting analysis into strategic action, including:

Ability to navigate the complex intersections of racial, gender, and class and other dynamics of power.
Results-driven success engaging and including workers or constituents with meaningful participation and authentic influence in campaigns and the organization.
Ability to connect workers’ rights to a wide variety of issues and needs, while maintaining focus on CTUL’s mission.
Political expertise, ability to navigate politics within the government and in our community.
Ability to lead the organization to create a bold long-term strategic vision that pushes the boundaries of what is possible, while also effectively measuring internal capacity.

Bilingual in Spanish and English strongly preferred, but not required.
Lived experience as a low-wage worker is welcomed, but not required.

CTUL Strategic Approach

CTUL focuses on organizing with the most vulnerable workers in our economy, using innovative approaches to create new strategies for building worker power to create meaningful improvements for our communities.

Our work takes place in a context where low-wage, non-union workers are systematically under attack and exploited for profit by corporate interests. Even when we win expanded rights or industry improvements, workers often do not know what rights they have, and cannot rely on the existing systems to enforce those rights. That’s why CTUL organizes to shift the balance of power between low-wage workers and industry owners, to educate workers about their rights, to redress violations of those rights, to ensure that workers are part of implementing policies aimed at remediating violations, and to transform the systems around us so that violations do not occur in the first place.

All of our members and leaders are low-wage workers across the Twin Cities metro areas. The overwhelming majority of our members, workers, leaders, staff, board, and stakeholders are low-wage workers who are Black, Brown, and immigrant. As an organization by and for low-wage workers of color, many of whom are immigrants, we are shaped by a system of racialized capital that relies on the degradation of our communities. We believe that we can shift how power operates in the structures around us by building our own power together. We lift up our voices by claiming a seat at the table, and then we define what being at the table means.

While our organizing focuses on workers in the Twin Cities metro area, our work has a statewide and national theory and scope of change. When we win major victories that systemically and structurally improve working conditions in a given industry at the metro level, we materially raise the floor for workers rights and labor standards across the region. We also show government partners and corporate owners that workers are going to demand an active role in their own labor, and that we all benefit when we co-create industry conditions in collaboration with the power and voice of directly impacted workers. This changes practices far beyond our geographic location, and it shifts economic calculations so that corporate owners cannot rely on worker exploitation as a viable business strategy or avenue for profit.

Our work is intersectional and draws its strength from strategies and partnerships that bring groups into solidarity across issue areas. Signature campaigns and partnerships include:

Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council The Building Dignity and Respect Program (BDR) is a Human Rights program built to prevent wage theft and other worker exploitation while securing a voice in the workplace along with safe and respectful working conditions in the non-union sectors of the construction industry. BDR is a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) initiative that rests on a strong commitment to empower workers through labor rights education and access to a protected complaint mechanism so that they may form the first line of defense against labor abuses.

Workers Confluence Fund Confluence is a strategy table and resource hub for partnerships between community-based nonprofits and organized labor. We broker knowledge, resources and relationships so that these partners can transcend the barriers that would otherwise stop them from building powerfully together. Confluence currently nurtures 8 partnerships (Atwood Center, CTUL, Kids Count on Us, New Justice Project, Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota, Sex Workers Outreach Project of Minneapolis) working in the construction, rideshare, entertainment, meat packing, childcare, restaurant, and warehouse industries.

Tending the Soil is an alignment of five Minnesota organizations (CTUL, Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia | Renters United for Justice, New Justice Project, SEIU 26, Unidos MN) led by people of color that organize in working class communities of color. We are the ones who tend the soil to remove the toxins of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism and nourish our communities to grow justice, self-actualization, autonomy, and collective communities. We exist to lift up the voices of society’s most marginalized members, and we stand in deep solidarity with one another.

Compensation & Working Conditions

This is a FTE position with an annual salary of up to $100,000 and a generous benefits package, which includes:

90% employer-paid medical plan for you and your immediate family (exceptional plan: Platinum-level Blue Cross) + dental plan
100% employer-paid vision, life and disability insurance
Yearly additional compensation of 5% of your annual salary, which you can elect to either be contributed to you as a bonus or to a retirement plan
Unlimited sick days; 3 weeks paid vacation starting and 4 weeks vacation after the first 3 years; 19 paid organizational holidays including 3 floating holidays
Monthly phone/internet stipend to support your home office costs
Significant support for professional development ($20K fund earmarked for Executive Director for coaching, trainings, leadership development programs, etc.)

The Executive Director will work from the CTUL office in Minneapolis most of the time, with flexibility for some work from home, as well as some travel for meetings within the Twin Cities metro area and nationally for conferences and fundraising. National travel will likely include 2-3 trips per year.

CTUL operates under a collective bargaining agreement with Minnesota Newspaper & Communication Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002.

CTUL is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from people of color as well as persons with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, women, immigrants, folks from working class backgrounds, and formerly incarcerated people.