Representative Rosa DeLauro (CT-3), Chair of House Appropriations Committee
Rosa DeLauro is the Congresswoman from Connecticut’s Third Congressional District, which stretches from the Long Island Sound and New Haven to the Naugatuck Valley and Waterbury. Rosa serves as the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, where she oversees our nation’s investments in education, health, and employment.
Rosa believes that our priority must be to strengthen the economy and create good middle class jobs. She supports tax cuts for working- and middle-class families and led the fight to expand the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan to provide tax relief to millions of families in the form of monthly payments that helped many families keep food on the table and cover the rising costs of everyday life. The expanded and improved Child Tax Credit drove the largest decrease in the child poverty rate in history. Rosa first introduced legislation to expand and improve the Child Tax Credit in 2003.
Rosa believes that we must raise the nation’s minimum wage, give all employees access to paid sick days, allow employees to take paid family and medical leave, and ensure equal pay for equal work. Every day, Rosa fights for legislation that would expand and protect workers’ rights, and give all working families an opportunity to succeed.
For nearly a decade, she has introduced the Schedules That Work Act to help ensure that employees have more certainty about their work schedules and income, an issue that has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses unstable, unpredictable, and rigid scheduling practices like placing workers “on-call” with no guarantee of work hours, scheduling them for “split shifts” of non-consecutive hours, sending workers home early without pay when demand is low, and punishing workers who request schedule changes. The Schedules That Work Act would curb these harmful practices by giving workers a voice in their schedules and helping people meet their responsibilities at work and at home.
Michael Lastoria, Co-founder & CEO, &pizza
Lastoria is an entrepreneur best known for co-founding &pizza. He is also a founding partners at JWALK, a New York-based full-service creative agency specializing in fashion, beauty and hospitality; and the founding CEO of Innovation Ads, a marketing and media services company.
In 2011, Lastoria launched a counter-culture chain of “elevated, community-based" pizza shops in DC, starting on H Street. Each shop incorporates elements of its neighborhood, including commissioned murals and installations from local artists.
Lastoria has raised over $60M for &pizza’s expansion and opened 25+ shops along the east coast. &pizza emphasizes their culture and brand over product pushing. Lastoria is a recognized startup leader and a vocal advocate for the Fight for $15, though &pizza’s minimum wage is higher. He has been recognized as one of the country’s top 25 fast casual executives, named one of the Washington Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, and in 2017, was awarded the Mort Harris Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Council of America.
Danny Schneider, Harvard Kennedy School
Daniel Schneider is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Professor Schneider’s research focuses on precarious work, social demography, and inequality.
As Co-Director of the Shift Project, he has co-led the creation of a novel dataset tracking the working experiences of service-sector workers. His work examines racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in job quality, the effects of precarious work on the economic security and wellbeing of workers and their families, and the effects of labor standards on working conditions. Professor Schneider holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Princeton University and a BA from Brown University. Prior to joining HKS, he was a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Karen Nagjee, AT&T Mobility Retail Sales Consultant, represented by CWA Local 3204 (Atlanta, GA)
Karen Nagjee has worked as a Retail Sales Consultant for AT&T Mobility in Atlanta, Georgia for 11 years. She has been a union leader for 8 years as a member of Communications Workers of America Local 3204. She is currently the Local Vice-President with responsibility for over five hundred Mobility members and has held that role since 2017. Before that she served as a union steward for three years. She is currently on the Bargaining Committee for the upcoming CWA - Mobility contract negotiations for the southeast region. Karen has also worked on the Organizing Committee with her local. In her free time, Karen enjoys reading, traveling with her husband, and watching Harry Potter with her daughter.
Artavia Milliam, H&M Visual Merchandiser, presented by RWDSU Local 1102 (Long Island, NY)
Artavia Milliam was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She has been working as a sales advisor at H&M in Manhattan for 12 years and was recently promoted to Visual Merchandiser. Artavia is also the caretaker for her fourteen-year-old niece and thirteen-year-old nephew.