Two USC alumni launch a nonprofit dedicated to protecting workers’ rights
-By Lori Craig
As students at USC Law, Melvin Yee ’05 and Matt Sirolly '05 (pictured below) jumped into public interest work and found a cause they knew they wanted to spend their careers fighting for: protecting America’s poorest workers, who are employed in an “underground economy” and often denied the wages they are owed.
The Center has opened its doors, thanks to a fellowship from Echoing Green, a foundation that supports emerging leaders by funding the launch of organizations that tackle social problems in an innovative way. The highly competitive fellowship provides two years of seed funding to The Wage Justice Center, along with logistical, technical and moral support.
“The fellowship gives us enough funding to begin working on the project full time,” Sirolly says. “Previously, we were only devoting about 20 percent of our time to it by taking cases pro bono.”
Both men are eager to continue the work they started as USC Law students, when they volunteered at legal clinics through the Public Interest Law Foundation and received PILF summer grants. Yee worked at the Downtown Labor Center and collaborated with community worker advocate groups like the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance and the Garment Workers Center. Meanwhile, Sirolly worked at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Foundation. The pair also took part in the USC Immigration Clinic, where they learned skills that would convince them to start a project of their own.
It was while volunteering with the Neighborhood Legal Services Workers’ Rights Clinic that Sirolly and Yee were first exposed to L.A.’s underground economy, where an estimated 29 percent of L.A. County’s workforce is employed.
“We saw that low-wage workers not only dealt with long hours and grueling work, but faced the grim reality of not receiving the money they had earned, even after the state had ordered payment,” Sirolly says. “Additionally, from volunteering and interning at other organizations involved with promoting immigrant workers’ rights in L.A., we became aware of the pressing need to enforce back-pay awards, an issue that was often discussed, but which little had been done about.”
While Sirolly and Yee still must secure about three-quarters of the funding needed for the organization over the next two years, they say the organizational support from Echoing Green is invaluable: skills-building conferences for fellows; access to resources, including their own staff; and a network of fellows, past and present, for support.
They also have a network built through their public interest work during their years at USC Law, where they each were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the school and the community. During their final year of law school, Sirolly received a Shattuck Award and Yee received the PILF Outstanding Student Award.
“USC Law helped me actualize my predisposition toward social justice,” Yee says. “The school was integral to embarking on this endeavor. The classes I attended at USC Law, the faculty I interacted with, and most importantly the individuals who I met, helped inspire me to start The Wage Justice Center.”
Adds Sirolly: “I came to law school with the intention of doing public interest work, and USC Law was a fine place to nurture this goal.”
For more information, visit The Wage Justice Center or Echoing Green Fellows web sites or contact the Center at 213-291-6883 or [email protected]. The Wage Justice Center is located at 1930 Wilshire Blvd., Ste 500A, Los Angeles, CA 90057. Those interested in volunteering and interning with the Center should contact [email protected]. Volunteers and interns will receive hands-on legal experience and an opportunity to contribute to a growing organization.