Nov. 12, 2019 – The staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center announced Nov. 7 that they have launched a campaign for union recognition.
The union organizing committee notified management of the venerable civil rights organization that a supermajority of employees had signed on to the effort, which seeks to represent workers at SCLC’s 11 offices in five states and Washington, D.C.
“We hope to rekindle the flame of labor organizing in the Deep South and form a strong union at the SPLC that lays the foundation for a legacy of equal rights, respect, and dignity for all workers, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical ability, ad national origin,” the committee wrote on Twitter.
The group called on SPLC leadership to “stand by the principles that animate the nonprofit – equity, justice and diversity – by voluntarily recognizing the Union and respecting employees’ call for deep and lasting engagement in the future of the center.”
Days later, management of SPLC rejected the request for voluntary recognition, announcing it had hired a Richmond, Virginia-based union-avoidance law firm. According to the firm’s website, its practice includes “responding to and terminating corporate campaigns, union representational proceedings, unfair labor practice charges, labor arbitrations, collective bargaining and strike contingency planning and execution.”
But SPLC managers attempted to frame their refusal to grant voluntary recognition as a defense of workers’ rights, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. In a memo to employees, Lecia Brooks, SPLC’s chief workplace transformation officer, said the nonprofit’s directors wanted “to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard,” the paper reported.
The organizing committee immediately called out SPLC’s leadership: “Management’s refusal to voluntarily recognize the union and decision to hire a law firm that specializes in ‘union avoidance strategies’ are counter to SPLC’s values,” the committee wrote. “The Center cannot truly claim to support workers’ rights, while also hiring a ‘union avoidance’ law firm to prevent its own workers from exercising our right to collective bargaining.”
The group will join the Washington-Baltimore Local of The NewsGuild-CWA.