Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect the results of the Outside In vote.

Workers at Outside In, one of Portland’s leading homeless programs, voted to form a unon with Oregon AFSCME.

The results of the vote, which took place over two days May 15 and 16, were learned Thursday afternoon. The union will represent 128 employees of the nonprofit organzation, including workers in youth, medical and support services.

In mid-April, the workers informed Outside In Executive Director Kathy Oliver that a majority of workers had signed union cards and asked her to voluntarily recognize the union, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Oliver denied the request, prompting the workers to file for an election, open to all eligible workers, through the National Labor Relations Board. The polls close Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

“Throughout this entire process, our whole goal in unionizing has been client driven,” said Eddie Charlton, operation assistant at Outside In’s health clinic. Pro-union workers, in fact, have been sporting buttons with the slogan “Together for our clients.”

Charlton and other members of the organizing team say workers want better wages, along with regular cost-of-living adjustments and scheduled pay increases, which they say will help curb the high staff turnover rate. The turnover rate, they say, undercuts their work with clients.

Charlton said he’s been with the nonprofit for only two years, but in his department, he’s now the “old-timer” due to more senior staff leaving.

“We just lose people so quickly,” Charlton said. “As people realize the demands of the role and they realize what a powerful thing it is to have that work experience at Outside In, it becomes something that it’s attractive to other employers.”

Outside In was founded 50 years ago this year and has grown substantially from a small nonprofit to a multi-program network for people and youths experiencing poverty and homelessness. The organization today has approximately 170 employees and a $12.5 million budget. Its federally qualified health center alone hosted 28,000 visits last year, in addition to two medical outreach vans, and its homeless youth services program sees between 800 and 900 youths each year.

Lindsay Hyland works with 18- to 25-year-olds who are experiencing homelessness and are living in Outside In’s transitional housing program. The clients are coming from shelters, the street, unstable housing situations, abusive relationships, and other traumatic situations.

“On my team of case managers, at 10 months in my position, I was the senior case manager,” Hyland said. “We had lost every case manager who was there before me and hired new people into those positions.”

Part of Outside In’s growing pains stem from expanded services, in part from the insurance coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act for people with low or no incomes. And with the increased client load come concerns about safety for front-line staff.

“Outside in has grown a lot in the past several years,” Hyland said. “We’re having a much bigger reach to the work we can do in our community, and I think a natural next step of that growth is organizing the workforce, putting into place a few new protections to keep accidents from happening. To keep support of the workers, to keep up the farther reach of our services and to retain staff.

Oliver announced earlier this year that she would retire in June after 38 years as Outside In’s executive director. She said she wanted the election to allow all employees the chance to decide whether to join the union, and after that, it’s the concern of the next executive director.

“I hope they all vote and they are all represented,” Oliver told Street Roots. “It’s their choice.”

While the vast majority of workers represented by AFSCME are government employees, the union also represents approximately 2,000 workers in numerous social-service nonprofits across Oregon, including Albertina Kerr, Basic Rights Oregon, Clatsop Behavioral Health Care, Janus Youth, Virginia Garcia Clinic and Transition Projects.

At Central City Concern, there is an existing union contract among non-clinical workers, but now there is a new push to include behavioral care workers under its terms.

“We have a pretty big push for organizing behavioral health workers in the area right now,” said Ross Grami, communications director for AFSCME Council 75 in Portland. “I think there’s about 8,000 behavioral health workers in the city and a miniscule amount of them are organized.”

Saige Gracie is an intake counselor at Central City Concern. Courtesy photo

From Gracie’s perspective, having a represented employee network, with good pay and benefits, is fundamental to the nonprofit’s mission.

“When you empower your employees, you empower the people that they work for,” Gracie said. “And when you have exhausted, underpaid employees, that trickles down to the patients, in creates turnover, it impacts our ability to give what we have to the people that we care about. We need this because the community needs this. That’s why we need a union. We’ve already proven that we’ll work for crap pay. We’ve proven that we’ll work ungodly hours. We’ve proven that well do it despite the best quality care for ourselves. We are nurturers. That’s what we do, but it’s not the best practice.”

Gracie said she plans to get her Master of Social Work degree but is concerned that financially, even after 12 years working in her field, she won’t be able to balance the costs of living.

“The issue isn’t about the money not being there,” she said. “The issue is about the money not being properly utilized to increase utilization of the employees that they have for retention and recruitment. You’ve got to make quality employees want to work at a nonprofit and stay instead of burn out and leave. This is about ethics. This is about proper decision making. This isn’t about being greedy. I just want to buy a car and sleep well at night.”

Volunteers of America workers have also organized and are embroiled in a contentious, first-year bargaining process with management. On Monday, May 14, nine labor activists were arrested outside VOA headquarters while demonstrating in support of VOA workers, who began the bargaining process more than a year ago. Among those arrested were Oregon AFSCME Executive Director Stacy Chamberlain and her father, AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain.

FURTHER READING: Union boss: Tom Chamberlain fights for rights of Oregon’s workers

Workers at VOA drug and alcohol treatment centers are calling for fair wages and an open shop, meaning workers would not have to pay dues to be represented under the contract. Like Outside In workers, they say the low wages cause a high turnover rate, which aggravates their ability to help clients long term.

VOA management, led by Executive Director Kay Toran, has opposed the union, AFSCME’s Grami said, and refuses to sign a contract protecting union rights.

Gracie said she grew up respecting the work of unions, a lesson imparted by her grandfather. But she had associated them with laborers, not clinical services such as behavioral health care.

“I grew up with an understanding that unions were there to protect people in the labor industry, people who were suffering from physical exhaustion,” Garcia said. “And I grew up to realize that emotional and psychological exhaustion, and that exploitation, is just as important to protect because we’re out there to help serve our communities in the same way that labor is out there to help serve their communities.

“It’s not right for me to set an example for the next generation of social workers that is based on complacence and exhaustion,” Gracie said. “I need to be able to show up for folks. And that means I need to fight for what I need.”

Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @jozuhl.

Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots