It’s always a little jarring when a charity pulls this shit.
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Sorry but my take away is that money might not have been the issue. Unions provide security and protection for the powerless against the bully bosses and incompetent managers
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A union makes perfect sense in a nonprofit context when you consider that wages aren’t the only benefit of a union. In fact most of the trans people I’ve known placed union representation as a top concern in job searches for one simple reason, a good union stops a bad boss from mistreating you. I can’t think of a mid size or larger nonprofit that doesn’t have at least a couple of toxic people in positions of power. Even if you somehow ignore the money and hours, you’re still stuck with basic workplace protections.
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I mean, people dismiss the concerns of exploited interns because “that’s how I started out”, and complain about union workers because “you don’t see me demanding fair pay and humane conditions”.
It’s easier to think of yourself as selfless and virtuous than to admit that you’re letting yourself be shat on. But the upshot is that being exploited often turns people against anyone trying to push back against exploitation.
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"Nonprofit" ≠ “charity”.
Charities provide money, gifts or direct services (e.g., soup kitchens). Only a subset of nonprofits are charities. By contrast, civic and advocacy organizations are generally acting for society more broadly by attempt to create institutional change (e.g., what the NCTE does), defend or maintain institutions (e.g., part of the the NRA does), and shift the political discourse to support such change or defense. Also relevant in the US: the distinction between a 501c3 and a 501c4.
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That was basically my point, and is probably true of a number of non-profits. That this seemed to be more of a trying to fix a work culture issue, rather than trying to get more pay. It’s also an area where the BoD is probably not doing their job.
This is true at all levels of an organization. Even non-union executives get carry-over benefits from having unionized employees, since it is easier for the organization to adopt the protective terms that the union negotiates and apply them to all workers, on up to the CEO.
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From: Lisa Mottet
Date: Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 7:58 AM
Subject: What’s Really Happening at NCTE
To:
Hi folks, please see a message below from NCTE’s Executive Director. Best, lisa
Please feel free to forward
Dear Colleagues,
As long-time trusted allies in the movement for trans equality, we are reaching out to let you know what is really going on at the National Center for Transgender Equality and to tell you about our path forward.
First, let me say that NCTE’s life-saving work is continuing, and our commitment to improving the lives of trans people by replacing disrespect, discrimination and violence with empathy, opportunity and justice remains unwavering. There have been some misconceptions about this because of inaccurate media headlines and rumors, so I wanted to clarify that for you.
This is a new chapter for NCTE, and we have a set plan and vision for how our organization will grow moving forward.
As you know, NCTE greatly expanded in response to the increased threats our community faces from the Trump administration, state legislatures, and others. The increased stress that resulted from these threats, combined with not having all the structures and systems needed for a larger organization, meant that we didn’t address internal issues fast enough. As a result, our staff voiced concerns about areas where NCTE needed to improve.
The management team and Board took the feedback and concerns our staff raised and engaged outside experts to come up with a plan that ensures NCTE’s values are reflected within and outside our organization so we can keep focusing on the tremendous work done here each and every day to advance transgender equality. Our plan examines and will improve every facet of the organization, including recruitment, hiring, onboarding, internal communication structures, workplace flexibility, compensation, community engagement, and other areas to make sure the organization is meeting the needs of its staff and of trans communities.
Every part of our plan forward includes a focus on advancing racial equity within NCTE. We know that no organization is immune from bias, and as an organization committed to equity and justice for trans people, we have an obligation to ensure we are consistently demonstrating those principles ourselves. We know we must always do more to foster conversations about these inequities–and take concrete action to address them–until everyone involved in our work feels fully safe and respected.
We asked all staff, including leadership, to join us in this proposed plan forward in order to ensure that all who work at NCTE have the tools necessary to continue working toward our shared mission. We realized this was a big ask of staff and acknowledged that not everyone would want to take part in this new chapter. Therefore, we offered generous severance packages to give staff who decided this next chapter is not for them the stability to make that decision. We offered this because we honor the work our staff has done on behalf of trans people and wanted them to know that.
In addition, our leadership team has been eager to recognize a union at NCTE, which we communicated to our staff consistently. The board unanimously passed a resolution to support our plan of voluntary recognizing a bargaining unit. Numerous board members are labor activists themselves. We would be proud and honored to recognize a union at NCTE.
Now we will rebuild and get back to the work that trans people need from NCTE. We will scale back up systematically, creating an even more effective organization than before. (A financial note: NCTE continues to be in a strong financial position, with income exceeding expenses for the last several years.) Our work continues and we look forward to continuing to partner with you to achieve equality and justice for our communities, now and for many years to come.
We are deeply grateful for your dedication to our shared mission of advancing justice for trans people. We look forward to this next chapter and continuing to work with you all.
All the best,
Mara
P.S. Our sibling organization, the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, has an incredibly important campaign, Transform the White House. Check out videos of presidential candidates talking about transgender equality, including already Biden, Sanders,Harris, Booker, Klobuchar,Castro, and Buttigieg. And please, spread the word about the campaign!
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if that is the case, they are to be considered founders, and are entitled to a fair share of future profits forever. Or you set up a cooperative or another form co-owned enterprise. That‘s pretty simple actually.
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The lengths people go for not having to face they have been, are, and will be exploited is really amazing. Lots of cognitive dissonance here. As if the exploited (not the band!) were to be considered inferior.
And why can’t we have a proper raised fist emoji?
If I didn’t have first hand knowledge of this specific situation, I would have bought this story hook line and sinker. But I do and it is tragic that NCTE is being accused of this. Their leadership completely supports unionization. What they had was a toxic work environment, created in part by their own honest mistakes, but massively magnified by the fact that most employees are trans and most trans folks have experienced heaps of trauma, and living through the Trump admin is also acutely painful for the people it is attacking, and all of that pain started to get projected onto their workplace. I’ve worked in a NGO with a toxic environment before and it has to be cleaned out in order to foster a positive and productive one. So employees were told this is the direction the organization is going, we’re correcting some of our mistakes that employees have pointed out, everyone is expected to actually do their jobs well, and if you don’t want to move forward with us, we’ll give you 10 weeks of severance. The toxic folks left, but now they are trying to tell the press that this was about being racist or anti-trans or anti-union. Its a smear campaign by a few of the bad employees who left and are trying to hurt NCTE. Tragically, it will probably be somewhat effective, and since there isn’t another group out there doing this advocacy (the few others mostly do litigation and education alone), the victims of this will be the trans community.
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