“A union gives workers a chance to fight back.”: How PPFA's DC Office Unionized & Won

Contributors: Kiley Fisher (she/her), Kyla Hsia (she/her), Herschel Pecker (he/him), Travis Swanson (he/him), and others. 

Website: seiu500.org/ppfa

Twitter: @PPFAUnionDC

Favorite nonprofits that everyone should give to: EBASE or West Fund

The staff of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s DC office are part of SEIU Local 500, a union that represents non-profit employees and adjunct professors. We want to be clear from the start that when we talk about “the union” below, we are speaking for our “bargaining unit” and not the whole union. This is also a great opportunity to talk about a union term that may seem confusing: bargaining units! The bargaining unit consists of the people at an organization covered by a contract. For example, Oxfam employees are also SEIU 500 members but form a separate bargaining unit. The union that you belong to will be larger, like SEIU, OPEIU, CWA, or NPEU, though often you’ll talk about your bargaining unit as “the union.” 

What led you to unionize? What did you think unionizing would be like before you started?

Herschel Pecker: It started the way it usually starts: a few of us were hanging out, talking about how we wanted a better workplace. One of us said, “We should form a union!” and because we were organizers by training we ran with it.

We collectively had some experience in the labor movement, but none of us had ever led an organizing drive start to finish. Agreeing we’d have more power joining an established union (versus starting one from scratch, would not recommend), we set to interviewing unions we might affiliate with. Most of them seemed great, and ultimately we settled on SEIU because 1) they promised the help of a professional organizer to support our efforts, and 2) PPFA and SEIU had a warm relationship that we hoped would discourage union busting tactics from management. (It was not sufficient in Colorado.)

We were pretty confident at the outset, even though the task felt large. We worked at a progressive organization, so most people had pro-union attitudes and management didn’t want to earn an anti-union reputation And everyone knew a few people down to join, so we grew quickly in the early days.

We hear from so many people who are overwhelmed at the process of unionizing, especially given that they might lose their jobs, that it could take a long time, and, of course, that it could fail. Did you all have similar concerns? How did you address them? What would you say to people who feel this way?

Travis Swanson: In the non-profit sector it’s not unusual to see a high employee turnover rate, and that’s one of the big things that most contributes to the overwhelming nature of the process. To win a union, you need a solid majority of your colleagues to sign cards saying they want a union. At the start, it seemed like every time we would get close to our card collection goal a wave of people would leave the organization which would set our numbers back. We addressed this by having members of the organizing team meet with new people as they were brought on board. 

Many people may—understandably—not trust the system to protect them from retaliation. If someone feels vulnerable it is okay for them to take a less visible role and allow people who feel more secure/less threatened with their livelihood to take the more visible roles. We recommended building a safe space to talk about individual capacity and security into your ongoing communication with each other and acknowledging these things from the start. There are many very important ways to help organize that aren’t visible to or responsible for interacting with management. And remember: there are legal protections in place protecting you from retaliation. 

Kiley Fisher: We specifically get the question about time commitment (which ties very closely to feeling overwhelmed) a lot, and with good reason. It’s been four years since we voted to start a union (and at least four months since we promised ReproJobs that this blog would be no big deal to write). Currently, only one person from the original organizing committee remains in the bargaining unit.  For those asking if this is normal: it’s not uncommon to spend years of organizing to get a first contract, but it hopefully won’t take three. Our timeline:

• Labor Day 2016: PPFA staff in Washington, D.C. notified organizational leadership of their intent to file for union recognition. 

• December 10, 2019: PPFA management and our union’s bargaining committee reached an agreement. Union members unanimously ratified our first union contract!

• February 2020: Both parties signed the union contract, guaranteeing us the protections in it.

• Summer 2020: Negotiated a COVID-related amendment to the contract.

• February 2021: Continuing to work with management on setting processes to implement the contract, especially given pandemic-related complications.

Some of our speed bumps: lots of turnover among younger and union-eligible staff (the current median tenure of in-unit staff is 16 months), massive leadership changes, and, of course, the record levels of nonprofit-flavored, chaos-inspired rapid response urgency that came with the Trump administration. The mood in the office was different in 2016, it was different under Cecile Richards versus Dr. Leana Wen versus Alexis McGill Johnson, and it was different before the pandemic brought us to telecommuting statuses. 

There will always be high priority and emotionally draining things to work on that feel “more important” than working to get your first union contract. But, we’re all here because we want to make the world a better place with tangible improvements in people’s lives. Don’t forget that working conditions for you and your coworkers fall into this. After all (imagine the following as a nonprofit-font Twitter graphic w/various coalition logos): Repro Rights Are Workers Rights!

Tell us a little bit about your unionizing journey. Where did you start and where did you end up? What bumps did you encounter along the way? 

HP: For years I saw brilliant Black and Latina women join PPFA and leave pretty quickly, and we’d talk about how terrible that is, both for those women and for the organization losing such talented individuals. Winning a contract with institutionalized, enforceable rules--like basic protections from punitive discipline--seemed like one clear way to address the issue.

Four of us started the organizing committee, but we hit the first bump pretty quickly, when the two BIPOC members on the committee got pushed out of PPFA. Throughout the campaign we had this maddening feeling of not moving fast enough as we saw more BIPOC colleagues getting put on Performance Improvement Plans or fired with no warning or explanation.

Our next major bump was self-inflicted. Our since-expanded organizing committee had collected cards from a majority of our bargaining unit and we were eager to win recognition, so we bulled ahead and filed our cards. We first should have “gone public” in the office, though. Not everyone in the unit was aware that we were unionizing, and some didn’t like the surprise that they would soon be brought into an organization they knew nothing about. We rightly faced backlash for that, but most of them came around after we talked with them and assured them that a union contract would reflect all members’ voices.

In the end, I got pushed out, too. As one of the more-visible members of the organizing committee, I started learning about a lot of the poor treatment my colleagues faced; it may have impacted my sunny disposition. (Also, it was 2017 and the tidal wave of attacks from the Trump administration had all of DC in a mood.) The day before I was set to take a vacation, I walked into my weekly one-on-one with my manager to see an HR rep next to my boss and a Performance Improvement Plan with petty nonsense we had never once discussed on it. With the support of ad hoc Shop Steward Kyla Hsia, we argued it down and I easily “improved” my “performance” but not before it put a stop to my getting a basic cost-of-living raise that year. A few months later, I had to leave DC for family issues. Although a colleague on my team had recently moved away for family issues and kept working remotely, I had to tender my resignation. I hated leaving before we had won the contract and I’m forever grateful for all the folks who continued the work and officially started the union.

Kyla Hsia: I got involved with the PPFA union towards the end of collecting cards. It was my first experience with any kind of union organizing, so I didn’t know anything about how it worked, but luckily the organizers were pros (literally) and got us through the process. PPFA did eventually voluntarily recognize the union.

I then had the opportunity to sit at the bargaining table to help negotiate the first contract. SEIU provided a lawyer to help us walk through the process. We had a list of goals for our union, and David from SEIU was able to help translate those into a workable contract. There were many, many bumps along the way. The people on Management’s side of the table weren’t in the same office location or departments as we were, so they had no real insight into what DC staff were experiencing. It’s very difficult to agree on solutions when half the table doesn’t understand the problems in the first place.

Even though we didn’t have a contract yet, I also acted as a union representative for three of my colleagues in various meetings with their supervisors and HR. There are many benefits of unionizing, but having someone with you during these meetings is one of the strongest. When an employee is alone, these meetings have such a large power imbalance since HR and supervisors control an employee’s career. But a union rep is a visual reminder that our members are using collective action to hold the employer accountable and demand fair treatment—mitigating the power imbalance.

After my experience with the PPFA union, I decided that fighting for workers’ rights was a fight I wanted to join; I currently work in the labor movement.

Some folks write to us wondering if unionizing can really help make their workplaces better. Tell us about what unionization has changed at PPFA DC. How is life different now, both for employees and managers?

HP: People used to get disciplined, laid off, or fired with no consistency or explanation. A union gives workers a chance to fight back. Instead of relying on norms, the union contract guarantees stability in benefits for members. Even with the recent (multiple) changes in leadership, management can’t unilaterally change time off policies, standards for discipline, or salaries and raises. 

I worked for PPFA for three years before starting to organize the union, and in each of those years we had an employee satisfaction survey, and each year we raised the same complaint that we had no salary transparency at the office, and each year HR promised that they were working on it. In my fourth year, after we filed for recognition, HR finally managed to roll out their long-awaited salary transparency initiative. Coincidence? You decide.

KF: By protecting benefits that were already the norm at PPFA, we were able to negotiate to maintain some of them when they were cut organization-wide while budgeting for COVID. We’re really proud that we were able to secure a small percentage of annual increases for staff who are paid less than $65,000 and a commitment from management to freeze non-disciplinary layoffs for bargaining unit members till the end of December 2020.

As for managers, an interesting and important problem that’s come from working from home is how telecommuting impacts who is in the bargaining unit. This includes: whether or not a manager’s decision to move impacts who is in the bargaining unit; new staff who are starting work as telecommuters; and members moving to long-term telecommuting status. Our contract covers anyone based in the DC office or who reports to the DC office; as many of us and our managers have physically moved from, this should not change the fact that we still are part of the DC office. We are currently working with HR to enshrine those protections and create a very clear process for managers and HR when it comes to remote onboarding new bargaining unit staff, and ensuring those new positions, which would have been in the DC office, continue to be protected through our contract.

What would you say to the many leaders at reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations who say that their organizations are already "inherently" good for workers?

KH: You need to understand that unionizing is an act of care. We unionized because we cared about PPFA’s mission and the patients across the country — how can we fight for them if we’re too busy getting burnt out in a toxic workplace? We unionized because we cared about ourselves and our coworkers. We wanted everyone to thrive at PPFA, not just a chosen few.

So if you’re sitting on the Management side of the table, remember that the people across from you are on your team. You’re in the same fight. You care about the same mission. Instead of leaving and giving up, they’re taking the time to tell you what they need to do their best work. Don’t treat them like the enemy, because there’s already enough enemies to reproductive health, rights, and justice out in the world.

Anonymous: If PPFA and other progressive orgs really live out their values of ‘tending to the team,’ then management and HR should be 100% all in to support the union. Being part of a union is being part of the collective voice of workers who are too often ignored, silenced, overlooked. If equity is central to our missions, then working with the bargaining unit to ensure equity in pay, work practices, and etc. should be the floor — not the ceiling.

What do you think other repro workers should know about unionizing? 

You aren’t alone in this. Nonprofits thrive on a family and mission-above-all martyr mentality. Don’t ever let this make you feel obliged to put your employer’s needs above your own! Support each other and make note of every time your organization is publicly supporting unions and union allies. If you’re in a more secure position in your organization, step up. If you’re sharing Instagram stories about how to be a good white ally, step up. We don’t need to use the same models we use on work projects and campaigns to organize ourselves; roles don’t need to be permanent, or belong to one person. Stepping up doesn’t mean being “the” leader or one of “the” leaders; it can just mean being more public with your involvement and passing on info from other coworkers, who are also leaders in this. Building consensus doesn’t mean approval chains, it means whatever your unit agrees to early on, whether that be voting, or representatives sticking to a general outline, etc. 

Set up systems of accountability for yourselves and each other. Share your salaries. Think about people out of unit, like temps and cycle hires. Listen to feedback from your colleagues. Allow anonymity. Recognize the work you’re doing for each other. Respect each other. Allow and protect vulnerability from each other, but never expect it or demand it from each other. Share memes. Keep track of internal problems and what you want your employer to do better. Create room for that feedback, those ideas, and consistent ways for people to add to them. Don’t communicate using resources your bosses can monitor, like work email or work Slack. Start a separate Slack group or a Signal group or whatever else feels comfortable and keep iterating on how to increase that transparency. Create a FAQ doc from the start and use accessible terms. Look at other contracts for inspiration and don’t let your current organizational policies define the limits of your goals (we’re happy to share ours!).  

You don’t need to be an expert or have experience with unions to be the catalyst in your organization’s journey to unionize. Trust that you have good coworkers who will be part of that learning curve. You don’t need a “360 degree strategy” or “comprehensive cross-divisional workplan” or a list of roles and responsibilities to assign out, let alone a timeline from start to finish; all you need is a vision for what a better workplace would look like. What benefits should everyone have? What kind of accountability and transparency do you want from leadership? What are issues that you have with current hiring and firing practices and opportunities for growth? What are GOOD things that some teams and people have access to that should be extended to everyone else? Unionizing doesn’t fix everything, but by talking to your coworkers, that vision and everyone’s feedback is a powerful place to start. 

If you don’t have a contact, DM us on Twitter with any questions you may have! Or you can email us at dc.unionleadership@ppfa.org.