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"The crisis highlighted how essential the clinic staff’s work was and how little support they were getting in return. Then, at the end of March, Ken Lambrecht, the CEO of PPGT, told staff that they would not be paid beyond their normal allotted time off if they had to stay home due to Covid-19. The affiliate claimed an exemption from a federal law that required employers to provide extended leave for Covid-related reasons.

“I think that was the point where we all kind of broke a little bit,” said Francesca Rae, a health center assistant in North Austin. She remembers looking around at her coworkers in shock when Lambrecht announced the news during a Zoom meeting. It was their lunch break. Patients were waiting outside. Lambrecht and the rest of the executives, meanwhile, were working from home. “So, we’re being told that we don’t have any more paid leave for Covid while we’re about to come face to face with a whole bunch of patients who are waiting to get in at the end of our lunch hour and you’re telling us this from your house?” Rae recalled."

Featuring former staff who unionized the Latin America Regional Office of Planned Parenthood Global, based in Miami, FL

"I’d like to also highlight that our unionizing, and all unionizing, is made possible by the sacrifices and labor of workers who came before us, who often had zero protections when they fought to improve working conditions. They secured our rights with their blood. What we do, and what we accomplish in our workplace, our field, our period in time, this too can ripple out in ways we can’t yet imagine. We encourage you all to think more broadly. Yes unionizing will improve your conditions and those of the people you know and love and care about. But it will also benefit people who come after you, who you will never meet, and because of you, they can have a better starting point than you did. Nothing is ever won in one go."

"We unionized because we had come to the organization to make a difference, and fight for the world that we want. That world is one in which every person is valued, respected and treated equitably, and where employees have the power to make change, not only in their roles, but institutionally as well. We believed in the mission and found unionizing to be in line with the values of Planned Parenthood, respecting and honoring all of us by giving everyone a voice and a seat at the table. We believed that by organizing a union we strengthened our organization."

"The organization's D.C. office unionized to 'ensure Planned Parenthood's long-term security and build collective power for the workers who make it possible for the organization to successfully carry out its mission,' said Aaron Wilder, a member of the bargaining unit leadership team and regional campaign manager at Planned Parenthood."

"'The things that have been highlighted at some of our affiliates, well, the national office isn't immune,' said a Planned Parenthood employee and member of its union leadership who asked not to be named. 'White supremacy rears its ugly head everywhere we go, even in progressive and nonprofit spaces.'"

"On February 26, the United States Supreme Court began hearing arguments on the Mark Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Council 31 case, which will stand as one of the most significant labor rulings in recent history.

The case is about unions and the kinds of fees they are able to collect, something that impacts millions of working people across the United States. The plaintiff, Mark Janus, a child support specialist for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, alleges that “fair-share fees” (also called “agency fees”) violate his and other nonunion members’ First Amendment rights, because said fees may be used to support political causes or organizations with which he disagrees."

"It is the deliberate project of what I call the Having Conversations Industrial Complex: a loose assemblage of professional speakers, non-profit organizations, astroturfed activists, diversity consultants, academic advisory boards, panelists, and politicians who are paid to generate a 'conversation' that doesn’t need to show tangible results. Rather, the only role of the conversation is to generate more conversations. And while they profit off of the Having Conversations Industrial Complex (professionally, socially, financially, and ideologically), those at the frontline are injured, arrested, and labeled 'terrorists.' The Having Conversations Industrial Complex exists to enrich the powerful and defuse radical demands."

"Corporations are eager to be seen as part of an emerging home front in the war against COVID-19. But over the last 24 hours, workers have called their altruistic bonafides into question. Protests at Amazon, Instacart, and Whole Foods — where low-paid workers have found themselves on the frontlines of a global disaster — have created a public relations nightmare for the companies, who say they’re providing essential services to Americans stuck at home. While workers like Chris Smalls don’t dispute the necessity of their jobs, they say their employers aren’t taking basic steps to protect them from infection. As they tell it, these essential corporations are actually placing the public at risk."

"From arbitrary data caps being suspended by internet providers, to eviction bans, to suddenly-implemented protections for some workers, we are seeing that things we have long been told are impossible or unfeasible are suddenly OK. And as the estimates for how long our new world of "social distancing" will last stretch from weeks, to months, to a year, it's becoming more likely that when this is all over, we might not be able to return to "normal" even if we wanted to. But why would we want to?"

"A lot of managers have no idea how to manage remote workers. As a result, they implement bizarrely tyrannical restrictions—telling their staff to leave their webcams on all day, for example, or instructing people to alert their manager every time they leave their desk for a bathroom break. (Witness this leaked Wall Street Journal memo.) The underlying message is clear (and insulting): We don’t trust you to work when we can’t see you."

"Employers also shouldn’t assume that people who started working from home overnight can easily jump into it. They may not have ideal work setups at home or might be sharing crowded space with others who have been sent home as well. Companies can ameliorate some of that by explicitly asking each person what they need to be productive; they might discover people need different equipment, more flexible scheduling, fewer hours, or other accommodations managers haven’t considered. But again, flexibility will be key."

"When a crisis like the new coronavirus temporarily forces companies into remote work, it tends to show them that it can be done successfully, she said. But it can also demonstrate the benefits beyond disaster preparedness."

"A big reason many companies have resisted allowing employees to work from home, despite technological advances that have made it much easier to do so, is the fear that managers won’t know if their employees are really working if they can’t see them, Weiss said. They have suspected remote work requests were excuses to run to the bar or watch the game. 'That’s been a sea change for managers,' he said. 'Manager myths are falling by the wayside because their people have had to come front and center.'"

"This crisis demonstrates the need for a fast, coordinated, well-funded response from a government that puts human lives above profit. Everybody in, nobody out. We need leaders who see this situation as a public health emergency, not a public relations crisis.

We don't have that government. So it's up to us to demand what we know is feasible: government intervention to make it possible for everyone—not just the rich—to do the right thing:"

"We took a deep dive into the parental leave policies you sent us from 46 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations. We also emailed 37 additional organizations and asked them to send us their policies. Of those, 14 responded (and one outright refused to share their policy). Here’s what we found."

"This is a matter of living our values, and it’s a best business practice. If organizations want to retain employees both in their organizations and in reproductive health, rights, and justice movements in general, they need to give us the time we need to recover and care for ourselves and our families."

"A union’s ultimate goal is to protect your jobs and make it better for future workers at your organization. It’s not about being the loudest or the most righteous or by having the most sharable social media content. It’s about winning for realsies."

"We may come to social justice work for the cause, but we usually stay for the comrades. This process can be painful, because it’s going to be a major call-out to whomever signs your paychecks and some of your friends might lose their jobs."

"Speaking to the Chicago Democratic Socialists in May—a speaking invitation it’s hard to imagine Trumka ever accepting—Nelson extolled radical labor leaders of yore. She spoke of A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the first black union, and his protégé, Bayard Rustin, who in 1963 organized 250,000 people for Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, and Lucy Gonzales Parsons, who was thrust into activism after her husband was executed on false charges that he had carried out an attack at a labor demonstration in 1886. 'They were shot down at Homestead, Pennsylvania and in the hills of West Virginia,' Nelson said. 'They were hanged for the Haymarket Affair in Chicago and beaten on an overpass near Detroit. … These activists thought it was important enough to stand up against all odds. … Today it’s our turn. Our task,' Nelson added, 'is to build a labor movement that sees itself truly as a labor movement — not just a collection of separate unions.'"