Why Workers Picketed the Southern Poverty Law Center
Employees and union activists say the civil rights organization mistreats its lowest-paid and most marginalized workers.
Maximillian Alvarez
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The Southern Poverty Law Center is a historic civil rights organization that, for 50 years, has been advancing social justice through legal, educational, and advocacy efforts primarily in the Deep South. However, after overwhelmingly voting to unionize in 2019, staff at SPLC say the organization has been stalling negotiations over their first union contract and unfairly treating its lowest-paid and most marginalized workers. On Monday, March 28, SPLC Union members held an informational picket outside the org’s headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, “to protest management’s forcing mostly Black women employees to return to the office while allowing the option of remote work for white and higher-paid employees.” In this mini-cast, we talk with Katie Glenn, who has worked for SPLC for nearly three years and is a member of the SPLC Union bargaining committee, and Lisa D. Wright, who has worked at SPLC for over 20 years, was a member of the original organizing committee, and is also a steward and a member of the SPLC Union bargaining committee.
Additional links/info below…
- SPLC Union website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram
- SPLC Union Press Release: SPLC Union Members Picket Over Management’s Inequitable Office Reopening Plan
- Kim Chandler, AP News, “Southern Poverty Law Center Employees Vote to Join Union”
- Sarah Jaffe, The Progressive, “Nonprofit Workers Join the Movement to Unionize”
Permanent links below…
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- Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
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- Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song”
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Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InTheseTimes.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.
