to Support Progressive Nonprofit Workers Unionize Their Workplaces

For Immediate Release:
Friday, March 1, 2024 

Media Contact: 
Meg Ward, meg@breachcollective.org, 503-341-8590 

Portland, OR – Today, Breach Collective (Breach) with the support of Communications Workers of America (CWA) launched Organize Your Organization! (OYO), a first-of-its-kind initiative to build worker power in the nonprofit sector. With the rallying cry “if you have a cause, you need a union,” OYO was shaped by the firsthand experiences of workers and organizers in the climate and labor movements and state-level politics. The launch includes a website, social media channels, and the release of a digital handbook titled Organize Your Organization! A guide to unionizing your nonprofit workplace. These resources provide workers at progressive-branded nonprofits with the knowledge and tools they need to organize their workplace, win recognition of their union, and successfully negotiate a contract. 

Caitlin Howard, handbook author and co-founder and content strategist at Breach, said: 

“Organize Your Organization! empowers nonprofit workers to tangibly improve their working conditions through unionization. By spurring more union campaigns across the nonprofit sector, OYO will help workers advocate for their well-being and thereby have more capacity to fight for the causes they care about. The handbook we developed walks workers through what unions are, how to organize one, and how to leverage it to advance justice in the workplace. We are excited to see the ripple effects of this project for workers’ rights across the nonprofit sector, and the entire American labor force.”

The handbook outlines the continued uptick in unionization efforts from thousands of nonprofit workers who have reached the conclusion that better workplace conditions make for happier workers and better work, that “suffering for the cause” is a dangerous and counterproductive myth, and that workplace democracy helps further an organization’s mission. These workers have not only fought for improvements in their own workplaces, but have helped forge deeper connections between the labor movement and environmental and social justice movements. 

Isabel Aries, handbook author and CWA organizer, said: 

“When I speak with nonprofit workers, many of them face the same issues: chronic burnout, a lack of work-life balance, and an expectation to sacrifice themselves for their organization’s mission. But we can create better norms for the nonprofit sector, where people have a democratic say in their workplace, and are then better empowered to fight for the causes that they hold dear. To do that, many organizations are choosing to unionize. The American labor movement is quickly growing and can’t keep up with the rapid rate of nonprofit unionization, but nonprofit workers shouldn’t have to wait in limbo to get access to a union organizer like me before beginning to organize. That’s why we wrote Organize Your Organization! - so workers are empowered to organize themselves and build a strong union in their own workplaces, on their own timeline.” 

Danny Noonan, handbook author and co-founder and climate strategist at Breach, said: 

“Historically, organized labor has played a central role in securing social change that benefits the working class. In the face of today’s cascading crises, nonprofit workers have incredible potential to serve as a bridge between the causes and mission their organizations pursue, and the wider labor movement. Specifically, we believe a union-dense nonprofit sector can help push social services and advocacy in a more pro-worker direction, while also contributing to the creation of labor federations that are less introspective, and more progressive and socially-conscious.”

Meg Ward, handbook author and co-founder and director of communications at Breach, said: 

“We are seeing nonprofit workers unionize at the highest rates in decades. However, this uptick makes it difficult for larger unions to keep up and provide support to these workers and their campaigns. We created this handbook because we don’t believe this should stop workers from organizing, we wanted to provide them with everything they need to do this work themselves. Just this week we saw Starbucks workers win when management and the union decided to start bargaining a first contract. These workers demonstrated the feasibility of this worker-to-worker organizing model, where rank-and-filers take on the responsibilities normally reserved for union staff.”

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OYO Authors: Caitlin Howard, Danny Noonan, and Meg Ward co-founded and are workers at Breach Collective (Breach), a unionized, worker self-directed nonprofit organization that supports grassroots campaigns in the climate and labor movements. Isabel Aries is a Communications Workers of America organizer who supports workers at nonprofits and ski patrols in their organizing efforts. She is also a founding member and former leader of the Political Workers Guild of Colorado, a first-of-its-kind union of political workers.