Liberal single-issue groups and anti-labor stances

This is an issue that seems to be getting worse rather than better.

Colorado Planned Parenthood's blatant attempt at union-busting has brought it to the public eye, with plenty of condemnation.

But it's really not that new, as I have recently been reminded, having kind of forgotten about it.

Among the worst of anti-labor liberal interest groups?

Environmental organizations.

I first came across this about a dozen years ago.

Sierra Club was still headquartered in the city of San Francisco at that time, rather than in the moderately less expensive Oakland. (That's of course relative.)

It needed a copy editor for its "Sierra" magazine, its main national publication.

And it was offering? $33,000 per year. To work NOT in the "Bay Area," but in the city of San Francisco.

Yep.

And, this isn't unique.

A couple of years ago, the Public Interest Network, parent organization of the various state PIRGs and part of Work for Progress, was still offering 20-somethings about $26,000 a year to work as two-year campaign organizers. That was on salary, with the pay just high enough to be above the federal threshold where you couldn't put people on salary. They've now bumped that to $27K and offered VERY modest cost of living additions for the highest-priced of cities, but no more than that.

There's a reason for that. These people were being expected to work six-day weeks regularly and often seven-day weeks. Don't believe me? Go to Glassdoor, where you'll find a problematic inverted U of ratings for Public Interest Network. It has enough people who like it that it's above 3.0 stars, but there are almost no three-star ratings. It's a fair chunk of 5s, probably more 4s, almost no 3s, and at the other end, some 1s and more 2s. At these starter jobs, people talk about working not 60 hours a week but 70 or more. They also talk about other things, some of them even worse. And, even "just" 60 hours a week is ... ridiculous.

But it's not just PIN.

There's another "tell."

If you go to a place like Idealist or Opportunity Knocks, you'll see something like this at many PIN jobs:

Details: Target annual compensation for this position is commensurate with the relevant professional experience and/or advanced degrees that a candidate has.

Without a dollar amount.

I remember that from something else Sierra-related more than a dozen years ago. Its tchotchke of choice at the time for membership renewals was a daypack. Problem? No country of origin tag on it. I, and many, many others, emailed to complain.

Sierra said, shorter version, "trust us." Longer version was "Country of origin is commensurate with the values of Sierra Club" or words to that effect.

But, hey, that's better than some folks.

Take Center for Biological Diversity. On both Glassdoor and its own website, it doesn't even mention that much. In fact, it says NOTHING about pay. Only about benefits and "relaxed work atmosphere." And, on corporate ratings at Glassdoor, it has a similar inverted U to PIN/PIRG/Work for Progress, and for largely the same reasons.

At both places, some critical reviewers add notes about "get things in writing" or similar.

One additional factor is the lack of diversity that still plagues the environmental movement, despite urban environmental justice campaigns by groups like Sierra. Commenters noted that, too, especially at PIN. And

Of course, there's also the hypocrisy factor of enviro groups being heavy junk mailers.

There's also the fact that at least some of these groups, while being green, aren't "Green" if you catch my drift. PIN's organizing campaigns are as much or more about the Democratic party than about the environment.

But, let's get back to the bottom line. Any company or nonprofit group that won't post a salary range for most of its jobs should rightly be looked at askance.

Now, unions aren't perfect themselves. And, on environmental issues, traditional manufacturing unions have too often drunk too much of the ownership class's Kool-Aid. Also, many decades ago, most unions had more of a racism problem than the likes of Jacobin admit today or ever will admit. But, other than the lead-in from Colorado Planned Parenthood, I didn't talk explicitly about unions — I talked about labor issues.

But, let's take it back to unions. PIN's development sister, the Fund for the Public Interest, has engaged multiple times in union-busting.

Finally, this all speaks to poor management, and poor management that is driven as much by late-stage capitalism as things in the for-profit business world.

The amount of job turnover they generate, above all at PIRG/PIN/Work for Progress, but to some degree, I think, at CBD et al, is high. Horrifically high at the PIRG family. Even with the low-funded crappy training they provide (and the free guilt-tripping they give you on the way out the door) surely this is penny-wise, pound-foolish.