Domestic violence advocates organize for union protections, better client care

by Rebecca McCarthy

Employees at Sanctuary for Families—a New York City nonprofit that provides shelter, legal services, and general support to victims of domestic and gender-based violence—informed management they were unionizing with National Organization for Legal Service Workers (NOLSW) UAW Local 2320 yesterday. Employees cited layoffs, low wages, untenable workloads, lackluster anti-racism initiatives, and little transparency from upper management as reasons for organizing.

“I mean, people are trying. There are some efforts within to recognize problems with racism, tokenizing, prejudice, assumptions, white saviorism—but it just hasn't gone anywhere,” said Carla, a member of the legal department.* “I think this happens a lot in [domestic violence] work. It's pretty easy to come at it from a saviorist place, because many of our clients are women of color—individuals of color, but mostly mostly women-identifying individuals. [They’re] low income; many of our clients are immigrants. And it's very easy to have this narrative where we have a largely white organization saving people.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 10 million Americans experience domestic violence each year. At some point in their life, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men will be physically abused and/or stalked by an intimate partner (the study does not include trans and gender non-conforming individuals). The national rate of domestic violence has been falling fairly steadily since 1995, although domestic violence advocates point to consistent underreporting. It’s not a small problem; and treating individuals who have suffered from DV like helpless children is not particularly useful. “I am hoping that some collective bargaining [power at Sanctuary] would be able to start shifting that narrative towards a truly empowering narrative,” said Carla.

Disasters breed more disaster, with natural disasters and public emergencies leading to increased domestic and gender-based violence. Studies have shown that intimate partner violence in Louisiana roughly doubled after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and after Hurricane Katrina. The governor of Puerto Rico declared a state of emergency over gender-based violence in January of 2021 after years of pressure from activists, who noticed a marked increase in intimate partner violence and murders in the months after Hurricane Maria.

Intimate partner violence has risen with the COVID-19 pandemic as well. As climate change accelerates and violent storms, fires, floods, and pandemics become the norm, supportive infrastructure will become more and more crucial. When the COVID-19 lockdown orders were issued in the Spring in 2020, millions of people were stuck at home with their abusers—isolated from support networks and facing unemployment.

“I think the number of calls to our hotlines doubled,” said Carla. “So part of that just sucked, you know, it sucked for everybody in the whole world. People were committing [domestic violence] and [survivors] couldn't get out of their houses. But I think the other half of that was the expectation that [there’s] just no end to working hours, you’re always expected to be on.”

Carla’s concerns are echoed in employee reviews on Sanctuary for Families’ Glassdoor page, one of which specifically cites a communication breakdown between the well-off leadership team and the clients being served. “During my 3.5 years at [Sanctuary for Families], I got the impression that clients were viewed by the [organization] as traumatized people in need of rescuing, whose stories were material to be shaped for Sanctuary's narrative, rather than people who were experts in their own lives and cases,” a former staff attorney wrote in June of 2021. “I was told by supervisors to turn down for representation people whose life choices they did not agree with, even though those choices were made from a place of survival . . . This is not the place to be trained on client-centered advocacy.”

When asked about the Glassdoor review, Carla agreed that some of it—but not all of it—mirrored her own experience. “I don't feel like I have that pressure [to turn down clients],” said Carla. “I've taken on several clients who maybe weren't ‘a perfect victim.’ Everything else though, I think rings pretty true.”

Some issues may be related to funding. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, 58 percent of nonprofits reduced their services in 2020 and 31 percent laid off or furloughed employees. But according to their tax filings, Sanctuary for Families’ funding remained fairly steady during the pandemic. While COVID-19 may have exacerbated some of the organization’s flaws, many of them pre-date the virus. Nonprofits are notoriously dependent on corporate grants, which can lead to somewhat nonsensical demands from funders.

“Everybody’s [funded] under different grants,” said Christine, a member of the clinical team. “The issue that we’ve been seeing, is that Sanctuary will bend over backwards and say, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’ And then there’s pressure to meet those numbers and get the data in. I feel like in doing that, we’re not necessarily seeing the quality of our work in a qualitative manner.”

According to Christine, members of the clinical team are expected to juggle between twenty to twenty-five cases at a time. If a therapist is responsible for twenty-five cases, that leaves them about two hours of the workday for everything else. “One hour is supposed to be for lunch,” she said. “But we have meetings, we have training, sometimes crises happen. Sometimes we have to do a lot of case management. And then you see how that two hours that’s left isn’t really doable.” According to Christine, the company has put an increased emphasis on employee self-care recently, without acknowledging that employees have little time to think about self-care.

Long hours and stagnant wages mean that turnover at Sanctuary for Families is high. According to Christine, employees usually stay only one to two years, which leaves clients adjusting to sudden changes in case management. “Oftentimes, we’ll have clients who don’t know us, but suddenly we’re on their case,” said Morgan, who also works on the legal team. “If somebody reaches out to you and you haven't worked on their case, it can be difficult to familiarize yourself with what's going on in the space of that phone call, right? And I'm sure it can be really disconcerting for clients to talk to somebody who clearly doesn't know who they are.”

Employees hope that unionization will give them a voice in organizational decision making, create better work/life boundaries, and raise the salary floor. Maintenance staff and residential advisors, who risked their lives working in Sanctuary’s shelters throughout the pandemic, are the company’s lowest paid workers.

“While this campaign is specific to our organization, we believe unions are necessary in the broader movement to end gender-based violence,” staff wrote to management on Wednesday. “Across the field, domestic violence advocates come from the communities we serve: in experience, identity, and background. Unions are a survivor justice issue because financial stability and workplace autonomy are survivor justice issues.”

“The people that I’ve met while working [at Sanctuary] are so incredible, it is really disheartening to see really strong advocates pushed to their limits,” said Morgan. “There is a way to make this work sustainable.”

Rebecca McCarthy is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She’s on Twitter @reemccarthy.

*(Names of all employees interviewed have been changed, both to protect their privacy and their safety. Workers are concerned about retaliation from management and many employees of Sanctuary for Families are also survivors of domestic violence.)

AdminAugust 19, 2021