Staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center — a historic Civil Rights organization advancing social justice through legal, educational and advocacy efforts primarily in the Deep South — are unionized.

A supermajority of employees spanning SPLC’s 11 offices across five states and Washington, D.C. filed a union election petition on Nov. 7, 2019 with the National Labor Relations Board requesting representation by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, Local 32035 of The News Guild-Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO. 

The NLRB tallied the mail-in ballots on Dec. 16, 2019, certifying that SPLC employees voted 142-45 in favor of union representation.

From the beginning, the SPLC Union’s core values and principles have been clear:

• We believe in the power of collective bargaining. 
• We believe in equal rights, respect and dignity for all workers.
• We are committed to creating a more equitable, just, diverse and inclusive workplace. 
• We are committed to anti-racism and acknowledge union organizing as a tool in dismantling systems of white supremacy in the workplace. 
• We believe in workplace democracy and recognize union organizing as a tool to ensure a participatory decision-making system.
• We are committed to economic justice and recognize union organizing as a tool to secure fair wages. 
• We are committed to gender equity and recognize union organizing as a tool to ensure a workplace free of discrimination, including sexual harassment and transphobia. 
• We are committed to disability rights and recognize union organizing as a tool to create an accessible work environment. 
• We are committed to immigrant justice and recognize union organizing as a tool to ensure no worker is disadvantaged, regardless of their national origin.