DNC lays off employees without severance pay, says Union – Mother Jones

About two-thirds of the Democratic National Committee’s staff has been laid off since the election. Carol Guzy/Zuma

Last Thursday, According to the DNC union, Democratic National Committee (DNC) employees were told they would be fired without severance and without notice. The cuts affected some of the organization’s long-time employees, the union said.

After the election, the DNC plans to reduce its workforce from about 680 to fewer than 200. Some degree of seasonality in election campaign jobs is expected. But this level is unusual — and, according to the union, has impacted DNC employees who have remained loyal to the organization over multiple campaigns or even multiple decades.

A former DNC union member whose last day was Friday said she was shocked. “This is life-changing for a lot of people,” said the laid-off employee who spoke to Mother Jones under the condition of anonymity.

“The fired members include a valued union member who worked at the DNC for 38 years,” the employee said. “That’s why I resist the suggestion that this is normal, because we have members who have been here for decades who are shocked and angry and trying to figure out how to get through this layoff.”

In a statement on Washington Postsaid the DNC: “While the DNC has met the terms of the union agreement negotiated by the CBA, we share the frustration of the entire DNC family and continue to provide resources to all team members to support them through this transition.”

a DNC official said Mother Jones that all workers were informed of the possibility of layoffs as early as September 13 and that 95 percent of those who were laid off had specified a post-election end date in their offer letters.

But a laid off worker who was spoken to Mother Jones said that before the election, she, like some other employees, felt pressured to leave her full-time job and take a temporary contract position instead.

“I was told that I would only be eligible for a title change, promotion or raise if I signed a contract with an end date of November 15,” she said. The employee said management said an extension was to be expected.

“We tried to get answers as to why this happened and kept getting stonewalled by management,” she said. DNC officials did not comment on specific employee cases, but said all provisions of the employees’ collective bargaining agreement were being followed.

The DNC workers are not trying to get their jobs back. Instead, the union is pushing for a severance package similar to what workers received in the Harris-Walz campaign. (Run for Something, a major PAC supporting the Democratic campaign, has also faced a wave of post-election layoffs in recent weeks, laying off 35 percent of its staff — and well over half of its union.) Here’s what a DNC official said speaker Mother Jones that the DNC is in constant communication with SEIU Local 500, the union that represents DNC workers.

The mood is uncertain among the DNC employees who were not fired, said an employee who was not affected by the layoffs but requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the DNC.

“During my tenure, a common thread was that we were trying to break the boom and bust cycle of democratic infrastructure. So I would say this feels completely opposite to that,” she said. She plans to look for another job soon – but calls the decision “heartbreaking” since she worked in Democratic campaign politics for years.

Workers said DNC donors have reached out to them because they are concerned about exactly how the money raised by the Harris campaign will be spent, if not to provide them with a severance package.

“We find it very cruel that DNC ​​management claims that layoffs are just part of the job,” said a DNC union member. “And we firmly believe that losing an election does not absolve the organization of its responsibility to treat its workers with basic dignity.”

Correction, November 21: An earlier version of this article misstated the conversation between SEIU Local 500 and the DNC. They are in communication, not in negotiations.