Margaret Butler is a native of Portland, Oregon. Born to two librarians, Butler began her career in labor rights advocacy while she was a student working at the Multnomah County library. She helped form the Portland coalition of Jobs with Justice in 1991 and became its executive director in 1996, a role she served in until her retirement in 2013.

Jobs with Justice was formed in 1987 as a national non-profit network of organizations and individuals that campaigns for economic justice, workers' rights, living wage, the right to organize, and other worker issues. Jobs with Justice seeks to form long-term relationships and formal partnerships between labor unions, people of faith, community organizations, and activists. In 2012 Jobs with Justice merged with American Rights at Work to form a new organization retaining the Jobs with Justice name.

Portland Jobs with Justice is a local coalition representing Portland, Oregon. Portland Jobs with Justice was formed in 1991 from Oregon Fair Share, the Rainbow Coalition and over a dozen unions by volunteers including Margaret Butler, who later served as Executive Director from 1996 until her retirement in 2013. Portland Jobs with Justice sought to reactivate the labor movement and build a coalition of unions and community groups for mutual support. In the years since its beginning as a grassroots community organization Portland JwJ has worked with over ninety member organizations, including labor, community, environmental, student, social justice, and religious groups, as well as thousands of individual members. JwJ and its members support workers' struggles through rallies, demonstrations, vigils, community hearings, letter writing campaigns, lobbying, and civil disobedience. Annually this comes to about forty different actions and includes a Workers' Rights Board of eighty community leaders who use their moral authority and time to support workers' campaigns.

Early successes include helping win contracts for bowling alley workers, supporting strikes by AFSCME at OHSU, and by grocery workers against Fred Meyer in 1994. In 1996, Portland Jobs with Justice worked for a Fair Wages Ordinance passed for City of Portland contractors, and helped Parry Center employees to get their first contract with the Oregon Public Employees Union. Portland JwJ also held actions and mobilizations supporting the Oregon Farmworkers Union, organizing for a successful ballot initiative to raise Oregon's minimum wage in 1998. Portland JwJ played a key role in or led numerous worker struggles including winning living wage ordinances at the City of Portland and Multnomah County, assisting Powell's Bookstore employees to win union contracts, and organizing thousands of Oregonians to attend the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. The organization also supported custodians and nutrition workers' successful campaign against wage cuts by Portland Public Schools, helped Hilton Hotel workers sign a new contract, helped workers at the Rosemont School for Girls to organize, and supported the establishment of a day labor center in Portland.

Portland Jobs with Justice has committees that focus on particular areas and issues. The Sustainable Economics committee works on economic justice issues; a key project for them was a living wage campaign resulting in the Portland fair wage ordinance. The Action Education Committee formed after a retreat in 1997 and used art and creativity to bring more young people and rank-and-file workers to events and offered economic literacy trainings to Jobs with Justice membership and the general public. The Cross Border Labor Organizing Committee was a project partnership between Jobs with Justice and Portland Central America Solidarity Committee to help build solidarity between workers.