DENVER — Employees at a nonprofit focused on helping the unhoused have announced their intention to form a union.
Employees with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless cite understaffing and low pay as the major reasons they want to form a union.
Helping people experiencing homelessness is something Zoey Palmer enjoys doing every day as a registered nurse with the Coalition’s street medicine team.
“I grew up in Denver and Colorado and have wanted to work in healthcare for a long time and I kind of always saw myself working at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless,” said Palmer. “I love it. I knew even when I was in nursing school. I called it my dream job to work as a nurse at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.”
Palmer and other employees with the Coalition have started efforts to form a union.
They hope to form one with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 105.
“I think for me, personally, I was really seeing how the turnover was affecting our clients as well as the rest of the staff,” said Palmer. “We're operating really understaffed in a lot of departments.”
Palmer said it’s something the clients they work with have also noticed.
“They talk about how quickly they cycle through case managers and other staff,” said Palmer.
Palmer said in addition to understaffing some of her colleagues are underpaid.
“Pay is a huge issue,” said Palmer. “A lot of our employees also qualify for some of the same benefits that our clients do because they are not being paid enough to survive in Denver.”
A job listing on the Coalition’s website shows that a person with a bachelor’s degree hired as a case manager would earn anywhere from $20 to $25 an hour.
According to the job search firm Zip Recruiter, the average hourly pay for someone with a bachelor’s degree in Denver is $29 an hour.
The coalition’s CEO, Britta Fisher, spoke with Denver7 about employees’ efforts to unionize.
“At CCH are committed to working with our whole team and our organization to realize every effort possible to increase wages,” Fisher said. “We absolutely respect our employees' right to unionize and at the same time, we'd like to continue to have direct communication channels with our workforce and our leadership team, which is something that I've been committed to and demonstrated since rejoining CCH last year as the CEO.”
Fisher said she hadn’t seen any proposal and said it was “unclear about who is being asked to be a part of a bargaining unit and what impact that might have on our workforce.”
Palmer said employees at other nonprofits have unionized with great success.
Palmer said over 30% of the Coalition’s employees have signed on, which is enough to hold a vote.
But they’re waiting to get more employees on board.
Fisher said the Coalition has about 800 employees.
