Our History

Bargaining for the Common Good was founded in 2014 around the principle that labor unions and community organizations can leverage their collective power to win systemic change by building their campaigns together. 

For years, ACRE co-convened BCG with the Kalmanovitz Institute for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization at Rutgers University. Each organization dedicated staff to building and supporting BCG coalitions in regions across the country, like California, Chicago, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Portland, and Tennessee.

In 2025, ACRE and BCG merged under one banner and ACRE became the organizational home for BCG. 

Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University

Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor develops creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives in a changing economy. Through the Kalmanovitz Initiative, Georgetown faculty and students collaborate with labor and business leaders, policymakers, working people and their advocates to craft practical solutions to real-world challenges for workers and employers. The Initiative draws on Georgetown’s distinctive identity – its commitment to intellectual excellence, grounding in the Catholic and Jesuit traditions, history of inter-religious cooperation, global reach, and prominence as an arena of policy debate in the nation’s capital – to advance prosperity, broadly-shared economic justice, and respect for the dignity for labor.

Action Center on Race and the Economy

ACRE is a campaign hub for organizations working at the intersection of racial justice and corporate accountability. ACRE provides research and communications infrastructure and strategic support for organizations working on campaigns to win structural change by directly taking on the corporations in the financial and tech sectors that are responsible for pillaging communities of color, devastating working class communities, and harming our environment. Through partnerships with local organizations from across the United States that are working on campaigns around racial justice, housing, police accountability,  public services, healthcare, education, and environmental justice, ACRE is connecting the dots between local issues and Wall Street to build a broad national movement to hold Wall Street and Silicon Valley accountable.  

Center for Innovation in Worker Organization at Rutgers University

The Center for Innovation in Worker Organization’s (CIWO) at Rutgers University SMLR is a “think and do tank” whose mission is to promote strong workers’ organizations, support movement building and incubate strategies to shift power towards racial, economic and gender justice. Since its inception, it has leveraged the resources of a highly respected research university to become a centralized go-to institutional resource on strategy and organizational development. Facilitating the generation and dissemination of ideas, strategies, and programs for newly emergent as well as established worker centers, community organizations, labor unions and their local, state and national networks are CIWO’s primary objectives.