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Originally posted by pollyperverse in another thread:
I feel there is often a culture when you are working in the Left where, "because we do good in the world, we don't have to worry about _____", where blank is burnout, employee relations, provision of health plans, matching pension contributions, fair salaries, avoidance of unpaid overtime, HR policies, extended contracts, unpaid full-time internships (my personal pet peeve) or permanent positions.

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One has a staff that has ranged from one to four. We've dealt with unpaid full-time and part-time placements, provision of health plans, fair salaries, HR policies, extended contracts, and permanent positions. A sad and typical list.

We've never, sadly, dealt with matching pension contributions. Fairer salaries would come first, if we had the money. We're not unfair, but at the low end of fair.

Unpaid full-time and part-time placements: we haven't taken placements from Ontario Works, because they are slave (forced) labour. We would make an exception, maybe, for someone who had previously volunteered with us and who really wanted to do so again rather than really do slave labour elsewhere. But placements from schools or WSIB, yes, but not without much debate. Volunteers, and students who want to work for the experience? Sure.

(We had a bar in our county that claimed to have "volunteer waitresses" and asked customers to tip them accordingly. We ran them out of town, which was a lot of fun.)

Provision of health plans? Yes, or cash in lieu.

Extended contracts and permanent positions? They were all on one-year contracts when we had four, and knew we could not count on so much annual funding becoming base funding, which it didn't. But we managed to salt away enough reserves that the two remaining staff are permanent, with enough reserves to pay decent severance pay if we ever have to lay either off. (See above: at one time we had a staff of one.)

We've never had to discuss avoidance of unpaid overtime. We just don't do it; they get lieu time, and they take it.

If we had ever dealt with burnout or employee evaluation I wouldn't discuss it.

HR policies to reflect the above, yes.

I'm not referring to the other non-profit board I'm on: with a staff of one, there's no way to discuss such points in general.

I'm neither bragging nor complaining. I'm saying that the organizational culture of all non-profits I know of suffer from the same tension: we believe in social justice, and so do the staff, so they volunteer to work for less than they could earn elsewhere in order to serve the client base, or to further the cause. If I recall correctly, there are left parties elsewhere that have pooled salaries in order to hire more staff, all at low wages, as dedicated as mediaeval monks.

ETA: I'm talking about NGOs involved in, e.g., health-related, social and other services that were previously provided by governments.

[ 19 April 2006: Message edited by: Naci_Sey ]

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Originally posted by Naci_Sey:
NGOs involved in, e.g., health-related, social and other services that were previously provided by governments.

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Take a common situation: two NGOs with related mandates merge, in order to provide more co-ordinated service. Before long, the new merged board decides to reorganize and rationalize the two staffs. In the reorganization, an 18-year employee finds her position eliminated. At age 57, she's been dumped.

A court would likely give her 11 months severance pay. In my opinion she might get a bit more because of her age and limited prospects. (There's disagreement among practitioners as to whether age is a statistically significant factor in court awards for dismissal.)

The Employment Standards Act says she gets a minimum of at least 8 weeks severance pay. So the new board offers her 8 weeks. They know they weren't paying minimum wage. They know they weren't giving her only two weeks holiday. But somehow they convince themselves that they can give her minimum severance pay. (After all her husband has a good job, they've paid off their mortgage, she doesn't NEED to work, she'll just take early retirement. Well, no, she doesn't have a pension plan, but good old Bill will look after her.)

When she gets legal advice and her lawyer says she gets 11 months, they reply "we haven't budgetted for that, this will come out of programme dollars, we expect she won't want the clients to suffer." Dumped but loyal, is the expectation. Why would a board reorganize staff without getting advice on the resulting severance costs? The non-profit mentality -- all of us have to put the clients first and sacrifice our own interests.

A noble spirit. But don't the staff have some rights too?

(Note: this is a hypothetical case study, but is all too real. In other words, facts have been changed to protect the guilty.)

[ 19 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by Wilf Day:

True, but for all NGOs there's a big problem of expectations of employees, and even ex-employees.

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A noble spirit. But don't the staff have some rights too?

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
The problem with NGO's and unions is that volunteer boards often (not always) look at the amount of free labour they are putting into their passion and then expect their staff who were hired because of shared goals to put in free time as well.

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Yes, I've brought that up in negotiations in several NGOs. Staff generally do contribute free time, and up to a certain point we don't complain about it because we are committed to the cause. What's unfair is that it is not accounted for anywhere. If we were to get paid for the time contributed, and then donated the overtime pay back to the organization, we would receive a tax deduction just like any other contributor.

Looked at it from another perspective, working for an organization whose goals you value is a benefit; many of us are willing to work for less money because the reward of the work is greater, and the organizations count on it. ("The best staff money couldn't hire," as Ross Harvey used to say about Alberta NDP staff, when he was one.)

But what happens if a new board is elected and decides to change the policy of the organization, or something similar? That could represent, in effect, a significant cut in benefits. That's not accounted for anywhere either. And again, it might well be a better reflection of reality were staff paid market rates and then donated the difference back.

Many of our services, for example, are aimed at preventing expensive future stays in hospital or other costs.

However, the staff work for far less than a direct union-scale employee of the Health Auhtority. We do this voluntarily, as we also believe in the cause. However, if staff *do* ask for higher pay, the ED would (and has) reply that increased salaries would put the society under. She refers to our salary scale as "mid range" for a comparable organization, but that's not the truth. We're lower middle at best.

However, this isn't really my beef. As I enter my forties, I'm becoming more and more aware of the absolute lack of a pension plan or anything similar. We're not paid well enough to make substantial RRSP contributions of our own, and so we're left fairly high and dry.

However, I'm a big boy and I make my own decisions. If I wnated to work in the corporate would, I would be.

I guess what I wanted to say is that I think that NFP budgets, culture, and grant applications need to be built with the cost of a benefit and retirement plan incorporated. Done right, this should not upset funders, as this is a realistic expense of providing the funded service, not a way for the org to skim from the contract. And the services we provide are still, when all's said and done, both cost effective *and* cheaper when done by us than by government employees.

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You know, I sometimes wonder why the staff of most government-funded not for profit societies don't get thought of as scabs, because that's often what we are, and why the government funds us to begin with--we work cheaper than their own employees.