What the Hell Is Going On at the Sierra Club?

“Far too often, women, especially women of color, are excluded from critical conversations,” Berman responded by email when asked for comment about Mascarenhas’s allegations. “This is why we took an intentional process, bringing together a diverse group of people from various backgrounds, race, and gender, that included cohorts of leaders from across the organization to ensure we held firm to our values,” he wrote, while balancing constraints and strategic priorities.

The full scope of the restructuring isn’t yet clear. Certain employees have been presented with voluntary layoff packages. While unionized employees’ collective bargaining agreement outlines a process for PWU to help shape those packages, Garcia-Linz says they were given no such opportunity. And whereas a previous round of layoffs two years ago was open to any employee who wanted to take the opportunity to leave, packages now are only being offered to certain staffers. The “layoff list,” as employees have called it, has put entire program areas on the chopping block, including those dealing with labor, international climate issues, and environmental justice. Some employees were told they can apply for newly created roles, leaving them to compete for fewer positions and against new recruits.

Workers who aren’t being laid off have received new job descriptions. A staffer in the organizing department for one of Sierra Club’s national energy campaigns—who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation—said they received theirs last Wednesday. That Friday, everyone in the same job category had a meeting where they could ask senior management questions about the changes. “They told us we would have to sign [the description] by the end of May for our new job. If we don’t sign,” the staffer recalled, “then they would count it as a resignation.” The staffer, who has been with the Club for more than 5 years, said their new job description collapses several roles into one. HR, though, determined that the description didn’t constitute a substantive change to their work responsibilities, so they aren’t eligible for the minimum 7 percent raise the union contract promises employees who are asked to take on more work. On Wednesday, 92 percent of unionized staff being consolidated into the same new unit sent a letter to Jealous and the Sierra Club board opposing the job description updates as presented, requesting a longer timeline and more information before signing, revisions to the descriptions, and a more collaborative process.