Workers Rights Narrative Network
Through the WRNN, IRIS will nurture and strengthen the capacity to use narrative and storytelling approaches within the labor rights movement. By aligning worker-identified priorities with worker-centered storytelling, we help to build a more equitable and just world.
The Workers Rights Narrative Network focuses on the planning, design and launch of a new network generating increased narrative and storytelling capacity in the labor rights movements internationally.
Project Overview
Theory of Change
IRIS will nurture and strengthen a narrative shift and storytelling ecosystem within labor movements by aligning narrative expertise, impact strategies and worker-centered storytelling to build the conditions for positive change toward a more equitable and just world. The effort will prioritize connecting global majority and global north perspectives.
This is envisioned as a robust, integrated network of labor leaders, narrative practitioners, civically engaged storytellers and journalists, and other relevant stakeholders. The resulting narrative interventions will amplify the work being done to advance worker priorities.
In the medium term, IRIS will ensure that the newly established Workers Rights Narrative Network is collaborative, action oriented, informed by and centered in Global South perspectives and operates in service of labor leaders.
Activity Spotlight
Convening | Gig Workers United Summit
In June 2025, IRIS participated in the Gig Workers United Summit (GWUS), which was held alongside the 113th International Labor Conference (ILC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The GWUS marked a historic gathering of grassroots platform workers and labor rights organizers confronting the rise of platformization in the global economy. GWUS served as a space for solidarity, strategy and collective visioning in the era of algorithmic management and digital capitalism. IRIS’s role at the gathering was in part to formalize the meeting with a portfolio of documentation, audio-visual materials, branding and communications workshops designed for the group, allowing IRIS the opportunity to gain detailed and relevant insights into the narrative, communications and storytelling needs of the workers and organizations gathering.
Content Fund | Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights
IRIS supported Narrative Initiative’s partner Mississippi Worker’s Center for Human Rights to develop a production timeline for the first season of Dark Work: Devalued and Unprotected, a podcast series focused on worker stories in the state of Mississippi. The ultimate objective of this podcast is to bring to life and celebrate the lived experiences of Black workers in the Mississippi Delta and other parts of the state. The first episode has recently been launched.
Key Results
3 Big Outcomes
Outcome 1
Building a Narrative Network
The foundational element of the project is the establishment and maintenance of a networked community of labor rights organizations, with narrative and storytelling at its core. The first of its kind, the WRNN will be a one-stop platform that grounds activities in evidence and learning, that brings together people to support coordination and growth, that facilitates the creation of work that advances worker priorities and seeks to understand the impact of technology on the worker experience.
Outcome 2
Amplifying Worker Experiences
The people who know the issues best are the ones who face the reality of this global labor market on a daily basis. Through the WRNN, IRIS partners with labor rights organizations and artists, engaging with them to uplift worker narratives through innovative efforts in content creation. The project supports the development and distribution of a portfolio of content to amplify worker experiences and priorities. Through video, radio, poetry, blogging and other platforms, the WRNN and its partners bring to life the unique issues, concerns and hopes of workers.
Outcome 3
Improving Access to Narrative Resources
The WRNN ensures increased and improved access to critical narrative and storytelling resources by establishing a Workers Rights Collection in the Commons Library, an online library for change makers and those interested in social change, activism, advocacy and justice. The project has also made improvements to the user experience within the Narrative Directory, an international resource to support those using storytelling and narrative strategies to drive progressive change. Taken together, these interventions result in a strengthened knowledge base for labor and narrative practitioners.