In 2021, employees of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) came together to form a union in the hope of securing sustainable, fair-paying jobs. CIRC describes itself as a “statewide, membership-based coalition of immigrant, faith, labor, youth, community, business, and ally organizations,” with the goal of “making Colorado a more welcoming, immigrant-friendly state.” Many of their organizers have direct ties to the immigrant communities the organization serves, and several are DACA recipients.
In forming a union with the Denver Newspaper Guild, CIRC staff demanded improved wages, job security and clarity on roles and responsibilities. According to an analysis conducted by the organization, CIRC was 35 percent behind in wages compared to peer organizations, with unclear pathways to promotions and raises. Many staff also wanted a formal acknowledgment of job security due to their precarious legal status in the U.S., and believed a union contract would both protect their rights as immigrant workers and be aligned with CIRC’s mission to promote the dignity and human rights of every person, regardless of immigration status.
When the CIRC Union Organizing Committee requested voluntary recognition of their union last year, it came during a period of leadership transition. CIRC’s new Executive Director, Lisa Duran, had stepped into the leadership role at CIRC in the midst of the unionization campaign. Duran, who first became an organizer in the Chicano Movement, described her values as rooted in resistance to oppression and centered on caring for community. “I am the product of a union family. I love unions,” Duran said. This made her an ideal leader for the process, as it allowed her to approach unionizing efforts by CIRC staff with a shared fundamental appreciation for the value of unions.
As part of this process, Duran said she had to reconcile her own experience of overwork and burnout as a young organizer. Duran, who is 61 years old, identified as being the product of a generation whose predominant organizing culture was that of martyrdom, where the harder and longer you worked, the more you were valued. Duran herself burned out as an organizer due to the culture of overwork—and along the way, she witnessed the disconnect between internal and external organizational behaviors when it came to how organizers were treated. At one point, Duran worked at a labor rights organization whose executive director pushed for a 60-hour work week; Duran recalled intervening when a respected colleague’s commitment was questioned after she expressed her struggle to connect to the work due to exhaustion. Yet according to Duran, even this experience didn’t shift her own practices and her mindset that being an organizer required self-sacrifice. “Nobody ever talked about sustainability,” Duran said. “I’m grateful to be at CIRC, because in my generation, it was almost seen as a lack of commitment, and to see people being serious about [sustainability] actually gave me hope.”
Still, she found it difficult at times to reconcile staff demands with her own experience as an organizer, as well as now as an executive director who must think about the organization’s budget, legal responsibilities, and report to the board—and while Duran attempted to bring the values of collaboration, trust, and transparency to the process, she was at times in conflict with CIRC staff. Union organizing models typically encourage an adversarial relationship between management and rank-and-file staff, a dynamic that is effective in many corporate settings but can be contradictory to the values of small, grassroots organizations. This dynamic was sometimes at play during CIRC’s unionization process. Early on, Duran took more time to conduct due diligence on voluntary recognition of the staff union than the CIRC staff wanted, a move that the bargaining unit believed was intended to stall the unionization effort. In response, staff organized a direct action against Duran. Rather than take a traditional approach (i.e., negotiate indirectly through lawyers), Duran instead addressed the staff directly to share that time, patience and open dialogue to understand each other would be essential in order to strengthen the organization and build community through the unionization process. She recalled sharing with staff: “Many of you have said you want to make a difference in your communities, in our communities, and that’s going to require us to really know and respect each other. You may not like my point of view, but it’s very important you hear it. And we need each other. We are not going to make change without each other.”
Staff appreciated this candor, which led to a more collaborative process that included a collective and transparent overview of the organizational budget to discuss realistic salary increases. This approach to collectively working through an issue built a level of transparency and trust, which are not typical traits in traditional leadership-employee relations. Duran knew, however, that this approach would be fundamental to the sustainability and increased strength of CIRC for years to come, regardless of leadership. According to Duran, prior to her time as CIRC’s executive director, “there was a culture…of a lack of transparency, lack of communication, lack of a clear structure and decision-making process,” and staff were frustrated. Having a staff union and a concrete union contract has begun to address many of those frustrations, with long-term benefits. “The union contract is huge for our sustainability and strength,” Duran said. “It’s been a godsend, and I think it’s going to [continue] to be good for the organization after I leave.”
Ultimately, the CIRC Union contract won important victories: it included increased wages across the organization, improved health care benefits, the implementation of a 36-hour workweek, generous vacation time, parental leave, sick leave, additional annual personal days, and an eight-week paid sabbatical leave available to employees after four years of employment. Importantly, there is now a culture of and an expectation for rest that applies to all levels of the organization. Duran herself shared that as a result of this culture shift, she would be taking time off for a religious holiday for the first time in her life. “My faith is very important to me, but I always put work first. And I literally said, ‘Okay everyone, I’m taking off Wednesday afternoon, yay union contract!” Duran said. The cultural shift, she said, gives everyone “permission to rest, to take flex time.” She added, “It feels good to think that I don’t have to burn myself out to be a part of this organization.” The union has also led to other efforts to improve organizational culture, such as the creation of a Racial Justice Committee made up of staff from all levels of the organization. Notably, there have been other positive benefits outside of the bargaining process—due in part to the increased power gained by staff through the unionization process, CIRC organizers also were able to push for a significant role in the organization’s strategic planning process.
The Denver Newspaper Guild has a proven commitment to unionizing the nonprofit sector and has been successful throughout Colorado. But based on her experience at CIRC, Duran advised that the goal of labor organizations should be, as she put it, “to creatively think about the role of the worker in the modern workforce and how to build community,” moving beyond “stodgy” practices that reflect a lack of imagination about the full scope of worker needs and worker power. Labor unions must change how they operate, especially when it comes to unionizing nonprofits, Duran said. “The one thing I don’t like about union culture is that it’s very adversarial,” she said, adding, “It’s assuming that management is out to screw the workers, and it’s assuming the workers won’t be respected by management, and it just doesn’t work.”
She also shared that the wave of unionization has shown a need for increased resources at organizing institutions. According to Duran, CIRC saw no major response from their funders in response to the unionization campaign, despite the increase in resources needed to fully meet the needs of the organization’s staff. “We are doing a foundation campaign with funders to say that you need to fund us because we unionized, and this is the direct result—it is good for the organization, it’s good for the workers, it’s good for the directors, but we need you, funders, to step up,” Duran said. She added, “To worry we are not going to meet our budget is very disheartening.”
By almost all respects, she said, CIRC is a better organization due to its staff union, and she hopes their experience will show other organizations in the grassroots sector that unions can have a hugely beneficial impact in our workplaces. Because of the staff union, she said, “Morale is higher.” Duran added, “I don’t believe that we are not as productive—I think we are more productive. I know I am. Everyone is very committed and passionate.”