In order to effectively and sustainably improve the lives of our youth, we believe that maintaining a staff of qualified, compassionate, and dedicated workers that are well-trained and well-compensated is the minimum requirement needed.

Staff turnover at NAFY vastly outpaces our peer organizations and the national rates for our field, both among workers and management. We feel we are under-compensated, under-resourced, under-trained, and under-valued.

Leadership has consistently failed to address the needs of staff and the experiences of youth, prioritizing the growth of the organization through the creation of new programs over the sustainability and efficacy of existing programs and successful service models. Programs that provide the highest-impact services are struggling to conduct their basic daily operations. Program managers and directors are leaving for more promising career opportunities. We deserve better support for our work, better structures for accountability, and better outcomes for our youth.

It will take everyone working together to improve this agency, and this work can only happen if we are given an equal voice, fair conditions, and mutual accountability between workers, leadership, and youth.  

Our work is not suited to a top-down, corporate-style hierarchical structure. The stakes for our youth are too high to leave the most meaningful decisions solely to a board of directors composed of business figures and an executive team that neither work directly with us nor engage with our youth in meaningful ways. We strongly believe in order to ensure that ethical and effective decisions are made, we, as direct service workers, must have a voice.

The New Avenues Workers Union believes the only way to accomplish this necessary cultural shift is to first raise everyone – management, workers, and youth – to the dignity of peers and partners, working as a team toward the same goals. We all deserve better. Leadership, management, workers, and youth alike.

Securing collective power through a union would enable NAFY staff and management to work together to improve services delivered by New Avenues and uplift our community role. We’re excited to bargain for a better NAFY in a spirit of unity and mutual respect, something we all deserve. Most importantly, it would center the mission of better serving our youth as the sole focus  – and that should be everyone’s priority. Let’s unite in that mission. 

In Strength,

The Organizing Committee of New Avenues Workers Union 

(NAWU)