Updates

CTWU Check-In for December 13, 2024

CTWU Organizing Committee
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Welcome to the first edition of the Child Trends Workers United (CTWU) check-in! The CTWU check-in is a weekly newsletter available to all Child Trends staff in the bargaining unit. Every week, we’ll be sharing updates and resources to keep you informed. 

Miss a week? All newsletters will be saved in the public CTWU folder!

It’s clear after this week of info sessions and conversations, that we all care about our work at Child Trends and that we are committed to making our organization even better. It’s with this hope and vision that we want to have a voice in our workplace. 

Our reason for wanting to form a union is simple - we love Child Trends, the work we do, and our colleagues. At the core of our mission is the belief that as employees, there is no one who can cherish, improve, and protect Child Trends as we can. We believe deeply in ourselves, our colleagues, and in the power of collective action to improve the lives and conditions of communities, such as Child Trends. Ultimately, we believe forming a union at Child Trends and ensuring underrepresented voices are heard by leadership will enable us to better carry out our mission of improving the lives of children, youth, and their families.

Election Dates 

On December 11th, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) set our election dates!! 

Ballots will be sent out by mail on January 13th, 2025, and will be counted on February 3rd, 2025. For your vote to be counted it needs to be received, not postmarked, by February 3rd. This link can help with estimating when to send your ballot to ensure it’s counted! 

If you haven’t received your ballot by January 20th, please contact the NLRB at 410-962-2822. 

The December 12th closed hearing between AFSCME, Child Trends, and the NLRB was canceled because they were able to come to an agreement on election dates and most parameters of the bargaining unit. If you have any questions about this, please reach out! 

MDRC Wins! 

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the December 13th info session! For staff who weren’t able to make it, we’ll add the notes to the CTWU public drive early next week. Huge shoutout to Jalen and Colin from MDRC who came to talk about their recent contract win and bargaining process. We’ve added their contract and summary to the CTWU public drive. We will be sending out a follow-up with any unanswered questions from the chat, but in the meantime, here are some MDRC highlights: 

MDRC staff in the bargaining unit were still able to get raises during the negotiation process. The bargaining team was also able to advocate for the implementation of a salary floor before finalizing their contract. 

Although some staff’s job titles were shuffled, most staff in the bargaining unit did not experience limited professional development opportunities after filing and were able to maintain their same job responsibilities. 

Before organizing, MDRC was an at-will workplace. Their union contract now requires progressive discipline and termination only for just cause.
Let us know if you’d like us to invite them back for another session! 

Upcoming Info Sessions

Our next info session is scheduled for Friday, December 20th at 1 PM ET. We’ll spend time sharing recent updates and leave time at the end for Q&A. No charge code will be provided to attend this info session and staff must use time outside of work to attend. Invites will be coming to your non-work email over the weekend! 

Zoom info: 
Join Zoom meeting >>
Meeting ID: 821 0842 1164 
Passcode: 275509

Resources 

Check out our CTWU folder! We’ve added the following resources to give staff an overview of the organizing effort and election process: 

Top Questions of the Week 

We are actively updating our FAQ document as people send in questions. Keep them coming! We want to make sure everyone has the information they need. We also would like to ask for a bit of grace as we receive a lot of questions and we want to make sure the answers we provide are robust and accurate. Below are some of the questions frequently sent to our inbox as well as posed during this week’s info sessions and town hall. 

Can I be a supervisor, task lead, PD/PI, etc., and a part of the union?

A quick summary is that the NLRB will make a final determination on any job titles that Child Trends raises as supervisory and people in those job titles who want to be included in the union will have the opportunity to work with our lawyer and testify. In the meantime, no job responsibilities, roles, or other professional development opportunities should change. CTWU firmly believes in having the largest and most inclusive bargaining unit possible including peer supervisors, PIs, task leads, PDs, etc., and intends to fight to protect our professional development opportunities in a union contract. 

What’s the first step to bargaining our union contract? 

The first step is to create a bargaining survey and ask coworkers across levels, departments, and roles what you want to prioritize in a union contract. Priorities can range from protecting what we love about our organization, such as flexible work schedules and matched retirement contributions, to fighting for improvements for anything from expanding paid parental leave, to a more consistent and transparent promotion process, to raises. CTWU members will also be able to nominate the bargaining team members— your coworkers!— who will represent you at the negotiating table alongside an AFSCME representative. The team works on drafting contract language— called articles— covering anything from just cause protections, to anti-harassment language, to longevity pay, to benefits like insurance. During this time the bargaining unit will be asked to weigh in on major priorities or points of compromise as needed. Once the bargaining team and management have secured a tentative agreement, this draft first contract will go to CTWU members for a vote. If members vote yes for our contract, it will be ratified and go into effect! If members vote no for our contract, then the bargaining team will go back into bargaining. We want to be transparent that this process can take time, however we intend to fight for the strongest contract possible for our union, no matter how long it takes. 

Will promotions and raises be frozen and stalled for years if we have a union?

Once our union is certified following an election, current policies, benefits, and wages are locked in place, and Child Trends leadership can no longer unilaterally make changes to our wages and working conditions— instead, they will need to bargain with us as a union. At any point during the process of bargaining our first contract, Child Trends can approach CTWU about promotions, raises, or any other changes to our workplace practices, and ask if they can move forward with them. We feel confident that we will always be advocating for higher pay and more paths toward career advancement for our members. In practice, many employers approach their staff’s union during these first contract negotiations to implement raises and promotions throughout the bargaining process, and those bargaining teams accept, and continue the process of bargaining. 

Will unionizing mean we lose our flexibility? 

Unionizing provides more stability for us as Child Trends staff. Having a union allows us to protect the things we love and also bargain around wages, scheduling, paid leave, and much more. It’s also very common for union contracts to contain language protecting the flexibility that already existed, meaning that current flexibility is locked in place, and any future change in either higher levels of leadership or your supervisor/manager can’t change the previous “status quo” flexibility you enjoyed. Simultaneously, when major organizational changes do happen, rather than being left out of the process, we get to have a legally protected voice in negotiating any changes to our wages, hours, or working conditions. We also gain protections like Weingarten Rights, which allow us to have a union representative with us during any conversation that we reasonably believe could lead to discipline. 

Feedback & Suggestions 

If you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out! 
Email us: ctworkersunited@gmail.com