STATEMENT FROM AVP UNITES REGARDING LAYOFFS AT THE NYC ANTI-VIOLENCE PROJECT

Join us in solidarity by sending a letter to AVP Executive Director Beverly Tillery and Director of HR Jolene Halzen to show your support for our dedicated colleagues, and encourage AVP management to live their values! You can send your letter of support here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/solidarity-with-laid-off-ny-anti-violence-project-staff

On Tuesday, March 12th, 2024, The New York City Anti-Violence Project announced a layoff off over 10% of staff. The OPEIU Local 153 AVP staff union, AVP Unites, is demanding transparency and accountability from organizational leadership in the face of these sudden layoffs that will negatively impact an already shorthanded and overburdened staff. AVP is a direct-service and public advocacy organization dedicated to serving LGBTQIA+ survivors of violence. As with many LGBTQIA+ organizations, and many social service providers working with survivors, AVP’s staff represents and reflects the communities we serve. Union members had been previously assured of the certainty of their jobs and so were utterly unprepared for the sudden layoffs, which will leave those laid off without income or access to health benefits including gender-affirming care and mental health care.

Over the past six months, staff became concerned after around two-thirds of the board suddenly resigned, the Deputy Executive Director, Director of Development, and Director of Finance and Operations left, and our Executive Director announced that she would be leaving within the year. Although we were told that there was a hiring freeze and that employees should try to cut expenses by not printing documents in the office, we were repeatedly reassured that there would not be layoffs. It came as a shock when, on Tuesday, March 12th, our Executive Director Beverly Tillery informed staff that four people would be laid off by the end of the week.

AVP Unites is blindsided and enraged that AVP Leadership did not inform our Union Stewards of the imminent layoffs or provide the necessary time and information for our colleagues to navigate this difficult situation. During a mandatory staff meeting held the same day as the layoff announcement, Executive Director Beverly Tillery blamed the cuts on late city grants and a lack of fundraising. However, she neglected to address that city grants are often late every year or how management could have better anticipated this and planned around it. In addition, there was no acknowledgement that our development team has been understaffed and without a team director or a board to share the burden of fundraising, but rather, insinuated that it was the development staff’s fault that they were not able to fundraise enough. Throughout this process, leadership has not been transparent about what specific funding was lost, when they knew there would be layoffs, and how existing money is spent. This is a pattern of a lack of opacity regarding funding and organizational budget at the agency. While they move to lay off support staff positions, they are paying at least six separate high cost external consultants to implement new software, search for a new Executive Director, and perform the labor of empty director positions.

AVP, the only agency engaged in anti-violence work exclusively with LGBTQIA+ and HIV-affected survivors, prides itself on its Anti-Oppressive (AO) framework and approach both to service provision and internal policies and procedures. It offers life-affirming support to communities through hotline services, crisis counseling, advocacy, legal consultation and support, and community organizing at both local and national levels. The majority of this highly skilled, increasingly challenging, and decreasingly valued direct service work is performed by frontline staff who wield no decision making power in agency budgeting and financial planning, and consistently bear the brunt of high turnover, ceaseless vacancies, and lack of funding. Despite upwards of ten positions within the agency being vacant and frozen (including multiple positions at the director, managerial, and senior/coordinator levels), staff members are to be terminated as a result of what we as a union believe to be an irresponsible mismanagement of agency funds. These decisions severely impact our colleagues in and out of the union, and our ability to provide these crucial services to the community we both serve and identify with. We reject narratives provided by our agency that this is exclusively a fundraising and grant-based fund delivery issue, and we demand full budget transparency and immoveable protections for the workers of AVP.

In response to those impacted by this decision, AVP has offered two-week’s severance (with an additional week per year of employment after two years–though a majority of our staff has been employed for less than a year due to high turnover) and one month of health insurance coverage post-termination. AVP has been less clear about plans for remaining staff who have already been responsible for shouldering the ever growing work left behind by individuals no longer working at the agency, but given budget constraints we are certain this will come with little to no additional compensation.

AVP asks its staff to engage in crisis intervention, community organizing, fundraising, legal support, and HR labor in ways that center AO values in our work: positionality, intentionality, harm reduction, transparency, and trauma-informed and person-centered practice. These values have not been demonstrated by individuals at the highest level of leadership throughout this process and as such we question AVP’s commitment to AO organizational practices. Professional trust has increasingly ruptured across the agency, while staff are still asked to support community members in crisis within an agency in acute financial crisis and instability.

As workers dedicated to our communities and to anti-violence work, we feel harmed by these decisions. AVP Unites demands full budget transparency from AVP leadership, a no layoffs clause, a more comprehensive severance package, and protections for workers shouldering the burden of vacant positions with no compensation. We share our experiences as a commitment to transparency with our professional and personal communities, and towards what we hope is the first step in a process of accountability and respect for our coworkers and our community.