Just Economy and Labor Institute (JELI) is non-profit organization working to promote social justice and ensure the protection of labor rights. We support workers and labor organizations by offering educational and capacity-building programs. We also partner with rights-based organizations that share our vision and missions to conduct research and design campaign-oriented trainings aimed to achieve economic and labor justice.
Our Vision – Strategies, Solidarity & Autonomy
JELI promotes labor justice by empowering workers and working-class communities and producing strategic research for campaigns and policies aimed at achieving a just economy and society.
We also aim to bridge the gap between producers and workers in order to foster solidarity, autonomy, and a powerful working-class movement. We do this through the promotion of solidarity economy and worker/producer-owned initiatives such as cooperatives.
Our Mission
JELI is a non-profit organization working to promote social justice and ensure the protection of labor rights in Southeast Asia. We support workers and labor organizations by offering educational and capacity-building programs. We also partner with rights-based organizations that share our vision and mission to conduct research and propose policy recommendations aimed at achieving economic and labor justice.
Recognizing gender justice and shared leadership as the main sources of a group’s resilience and power, we also promote gender equality and women’s leadership in organized labor and worker organizations.
History
JELI was founded in 2017 by a group of labor rights advocates and researchers working across Asia. In 2017, JELI piloted a leadership-development training program with several Thai trade unions in Thailand’s industrial areas including the Eastern Labor Relations Group in the Eastern Seaboard and Rangsit Area Labor Group in Rangsit, Pathumthani province. In the same year, JELI participated in the organizing support to strengthen the coalition of the Northern Workers comprising mainly women migrant workers based in Chiang Mai, fostering solidarity among local and migrant labor organizations. In 2018, JELI partnered with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung to conduct pioneer research on the platform economy in Thailand, raising concerns about the casualization of platform-based work.