46 days after we took our campaign public, WE ACT for Environmental Justice has agreed to officially recognize our union!
This is a huge victory for the program staff at WE ACT! We are deeply grateful for your support. Over 3,100 of you stood with us by signing our petition, and the public attention you helped bring to our campaign was, without a doubt, an important factor in this victory. We hope you'll celebrate your contribution today, and that you'll stay connected with us moving forward.
Our next big step is to negotiate with management a fair and just contract that reflects and memorializes the key issues we've been fighting for all along: health, fairness, transparency, accountability, and a voice in the decisions that impact us day to day.
If you're on Twitter, check out our page for live updates: twitter.com/weareweact
On March 27, 2019, a majority of non-managerial staff at WE ACT announced our decision to form a union with the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), which represents thousands of advocates and human services workers throughout New York City and across the country.
In good faith, we asked WE ACT's management and board of directors to voluntarily recognize our union and engage in a solutions-oriented dialogue with us. To streamline the process, we even offered the option of securing a neutral third party to count the cards a majority of staff signed indicating union support.
While we had hoped WE ACT, given its mission and values, would embrace our dedication to the organization and recognize our federal right to a union, they have not offered a definitive response.
With a union, our goal is to build a workplace together that is consistent with our mission and core values while partnering with management for WE ACT's long-term success. Some of the core issues we hope to address through collective bargaining include:
- Accountability and transparency from executive leadership on such things as job descriptions, organizational decisions, and staff responsibilities, and more.
- Staff health, wellness, and capacity, including through proper on-boarding, orientation, and staff development.
- Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, and promoting respectful treatment regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, class, language, national origin, and more.
- A real voice for staff in the key decisions that matter most to our work and programs.
If you believe every worker deserves a voice on the job, sign this petition to join our call for WE ACT leadership to engage staff in good-faith dialogue and to recognize our union without delay!
Why is this important?
Next to members and residents, staff are the organization's most important asset and the key way the organization fulfills its mission. Like non-profit workers everywhere, we are committed to serving this mission, whether on the streets of Harlem or the halls of government, with great pride. But our current working environment is needlessly unsustainable. It is leading to high turnover and poor staff health, and impacting our programs and partnerships.
As a staff made up of predominantly women, people of color, low-income, and residents of Northern Manhattan, we draw inspiration from our co-founders bold action on the West Side Highway in 1988. Their courageous example demonstrates that taking a stand for justice can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it is always the right thing to do.
Through a union, we are reaffirming our commitment to WE ACT's mission. Together with management, we will find solutions to common challenges and reinvest in the organization's long-term success. More and more non-profit organizations are recognizing the value that a unionized workforce offers -- and we are confident that WE ACT will join this growing list soon. After all, New York City is a "Union Town."
In view of our present climate crisis and the continued exclusion of low-income people of color from important political and environmental decisions, our members, supporters, and communities everywhere deserve only the best and strongest WE ACT we can build.
WE are WE ACT and THIS is environmental justice!
How it will be delivered
