by Hannah Saunders
Workers at the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) are unionizing for fair and consistent workplace conditions, and transparency and accountability from leadership, which recently emphasized a lack of donations. As a result, several employees have been laid off while all others have experienced a reduction in hours, leading to financial hardships and a gap in response to ICE kidnappings.
“Leadership made decisions about finances, staffing, communication, and organizational priorities that brought workers to this point— including the decision to not take pay cuts. Workers deserve transparency about those decisions, and we deserve a real voice in what happens next,” the WAISN Worker Collective told TtS.
Many WAISN employees are members of the communities they serve and understand what’s at stake for the organization, which is the state’s largest immigrant and refugee network that provides resources to impacted communities.
“We know what it means when someone needs support during an enforcement action, when a family is trying to locate a loved one in detention, or when the threat of deportation shapes whether someone goes to work, sends their child to school, or asks for help— because many of us have been that someone,” the Collective said. “We do this work for our collective survival of our friends, families, and relations.”
Those unionizing at the WAISN Worker Collective firmly believe in WAISN’s mission and want to see the work endure. It told TtS that protecting these efforts requires accountability for people doing the grueling work and to the communities they serve.
“A union gives us collective power to demand transparency, stability, dignity, and a meaningful role in decisions about staffing and the future of our work,” it said.
Currently, leadership is making drastic, life-altering decisions without its workers, who believe that at this moment in time, they are deserving of more than just silence and instability. A stronger worker voice, the Collective believes, will put WAISN in a better position to support immigrant communities for the long fight ahead.
“For the communities we serve, a union means workers who are resourced to answer the hundreds of calls our hotline gets every week, empowering Rapid Response teams on the ground responding to enforcement through trainings and resources, organizing alongside families for political power, building relationships, and carrying institutional knowledge,” the Collective said.
“A union means we have a stronger voice in protecting the conditions that make the work possible. Greater stability for workers means greater continuity for our communities. When workers can collectively challenge decisions that reduce capacity, threaten essential programs, or disconnect decision-making from what we are seeing on the ground, communities gain another source of power inside the organization.”
A fund has been launched for WAISN workers experiencing financial hardships due to the loss of employment and reduction in hours. Donate to the WAISN Worker Collective Solidarity Fund at tinyurl.com/wccworkerfund.
WAISN did not respond to TtS’s requests for comment.
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