Last week, the Unit­ed Cam­paign Work­ers union, an affil­i­ate of the Port­land Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World, announced its sec­ond orga­nized work­place in its less than two months of exis­tence. (The first was the Cam­paign for the Restora­tion and Reg­u­la­tion of Hemp .)

In Port­land, Ore­gon, one union local as formed pre­cise­ly to take on this pre­car­i­ous world of street can­vass­ing, and they are grow­ing at a pace no one could have predicted.

Out­side of cof­fee shops and book­stores, crowd­ed Whole Foods stores and work­er-run co-ops nation­wide, you‘re bound to find can­vassers ask­ing for dona­tions or sig­na­tures in sup­port of a host of caus­es. They’re often young peo­ple shak­ing the can for high-pro­file non­prof­its. But as we get deep­er into the post-crash pre­car­i­ous econ­o­my, the image of can­vassers as ide­al­is­tic col­lege stu­dents mak­ing a few extra bucks on sum­mer break quick­ly dis­in­te­grates. Peo­ple are turn­ing to this occu­pa­tion as their pri­ma­ry source of income, accord­ing to many active cam­paign­ers. They are hired by inde­pen­dent­ly con­tract­ed com­pa­nies to can­vas for non­prof­its. The quo­tas are demand­ing, mak­ing the work one of the most dif­fi­cult low-wage jobs to hold on to.

Can­vassers work­ing for Grass­roots Cam­paigns Inc. (GCI), a third-par­ty con­trac­tor that does street can­vass­ing and fundrais­ing for pro­gres­sive non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions such as Planned Par­ent­hood and the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, informed man­age­ment of their union­iza­tion dri­ve two weeks ago. The union dri­ve began in response to what work­ers say were unsus­tain­able turnover rates from fir­ings and over­ly com­pli­cat­ed pay scales.

Accord­ing to work­ers, GCI’s strict quo­ta sys­tem means many work­ers don’t last past first few days of can­vass­ing. New hires must bring in $130 in dona­tions dur­ing at least one of their first three days on the job; oth­er­wise, their pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od ends in ter­mi­na­tion. After that, work­ers must aver­age $130 per day each week. Work­ers say the pol­i­cy caus­es such a high turnover rate that few can­vassers or super­vi­sors have more than a few weeks’ expe­ri­ence. (GCI region­al direc­tor Elise Stuewe tells In These Times via email that this turnover rate and the dif­fi­cul­ty of meet­ing quo­tas are ​“vast­ly over­stat­ed … though it’s true this is a chal­leng­ing job that’s not for everyone.”)

After GCI work­ers informed man­age­ment of their orga­niz­ing cam­paign, they asked to sit down and nego­ti­ate terms. Man­age­ment refused, and instead, work­ers say, insti­tut­ed a hir­ing freeze, which they believe was intend­ed to keep new work­ers from being recruit­ed by the union — pre­vi­ous­ly, they say, hir­ing was a con­stant process at the Port­land GCI office, with field man­agers report­ing six to 10 new hires week­ly. The hir­ing freeze was set to be lift­ed this week.

The case is dif­fer­ent from most union­iza­tion efforts, as UCW work­ers have cho­sen not to seek a con­tract or file for a Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board elec­tion. Because of the high turnover rate and work­ers’ lack of con­fi­dence that GCI would main­tain neu­tral­i­ty dur­ing card check, the work­ers are instead using the old-school tac­tic of sol­i­dar­i­ty union­ism. A form of orga­niz­ing that dom­i­nat­ed before unions had insti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion through the NLRB, sol­i­dar­i­ty union­ism means the demands of work­ers are enforced only through the actions work­ers can take in response to man­age­ment, rather than NLRB sanc­tions. (Although their right to orga­nize as a union is still legal­ly pro­tect­ed.) As a result, work­ers have few­er lim­i­ta­tions on direct action than in a tra­di­tion­al orga­niz­ing dri­ve: They can legal­ly strike and take oth­er actions at any point.

Right now, the union is lever­ag­ing pub­lic pres­sure. On Sat­ur­day, August 2, work­ers and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ers of the orga­niz­ing dri­ve ral­lied in front of the GCI head­quar­ters in Port­land, call­ing for the com­pa­ny to be held account­able for its labor practices.

​“I’m out here [ral­ly­ing in front of GCI] because I have worked with GCI for over a year, and the turnover is absolute­ly unac­cept­able,” said union mem­ber and GCI can­vass­er Haley Boyd. ​“Peo­ple are under­trained for their jobs and they are dis­re­spect­ed. The result is that when we go out there to talk to peo­ple about orga­ni­za­tions like the Planned Par­ent­hood Action Fund, ACLU, the Nature Con­ser­van­cy, we are giv­ing a bad impres­sion on the whole.”

Work­ers allege that, despite com­pa­ny pol­i­cy man­dat­ing 90 min­utes of train­ing for new hires dur­ing the pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od, new employ­ees are giv­en only about 30 min­utes of in-office train­ing about can­vass­ing — often with­out suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual cam­paigns — before going out into the field, which means they can­not ful­ly rep­re­sent the orga­ni­za­tions they are rais­ing funds for. (Man­age­ment main­tains that the stat­ed pol­i­cy is enforced, and that new employ­ees receive an hour of train­ing each day after the first.)

Uncer­tain wages, too, are a major stick­ing point for can­vassers. Work­ers say they’re unsure what wages they can expect in a giv­en week. GCI offers a base pay of min­i­mum wage in addi­tion to finan­cial incen­tives for reach­ing a quo­ta of $130 in dona­tions per day, on aver­age, over the course of a five-day week — which the vast major­i­ty of work­ers do not.

Work­ers say that about a third of the fluc­tu­at­ing work­force in their Port­land loca­tion is old­er than 25, and many can­vassers rely on the job as their sole source of house­hold income.

Addi­tion­al­ly, work­ers say that health­care and sick leave are not always avail­able, even when they should be. ​“We have had peo­ple in our union can­vass­ing on the street through very seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions because our employ­er nev­er informed any of its employ­ees we’ve been accru­ing paid sick leave since Jan­u­ary 1,” notes can­vass­er Andrew Lee. ​“We also have sev­er­al mem­bers of our union [say] that upon apply­ing, they were required to refuse the health­care that the com­pa­ny offered as a con­di­tion of employment.”

​“No one’s employ­ment has ever been con­di­tioned on refus­ing health­care,” says Stuewe. ​“There may be con­fu­sion over notices hand­ed out to new­ly hired staff as part of com­ply­ing with the Afford­able Care Act.”

Work­ers con­firm that they received pack­ets about the Afford­able Care Act, but main­tain that they were instruct­ed to check the refusal of health­care box.

In addi­tion, for­mer employ­ee Mandie Gavitt claims that work­ers were promised pro­mo­tions they nev­er received and that she and sev­er­al cowork­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed after try­ing to raise the issues with man­age­ment. “[GCI] needs to be held account­able … because when I com­plained to them, they didn’t do any­thing,” she says.

Can­vassers say they are galled by the irony of advo­cat­ing for non­prof­its when they them­selves don’t receive fair treatment.

​“We are cam­paign­ing for sus­tain­abil­i­ty, but we don’t have sus­tain­able jobs,” says Lee. ​“We are cam­paign­ing for women’s health­care, but we are lied to about health­care in our own workplace.”

At the August 2 action, work­ers and allies entered the GCI cam­paign office and read a list of demands to their man­ag­er: health­care, over­time, sick leave, a $15 hourly base pay for work­ers, an exemp­tion from quo­tas for the first two weeks of employ­ment, a revised quo­ta sys­tem, ade­quate train­ing for new hires, prop­er train­ing for field man­agers, ter­mi­na­tions only for just cause, and reg­u­lar meet­ings between man­age­ment and the union.

Work­ers had hoped the August 2 com­mu­ni­ty action would be enough to coax man­age­ment to deal with the union direct­ly, but the insta­bil­i­ty that has marked their tenure at GCI has extend­ed to the talks as well.

​“The way that a lot of us look at it is that we have no job secu­ri­ty already,” says Lee. ​“I’ve been in the office about three weeks; I’m one of the longest-term employ­ees there now. I have seen over 70 [to] 80 per­cent of the peo­ple work­ing there when I was hired be fired since then. Of course, there’s always the risk that our employ­er will retal­i­ate against us ille­gal­ly, but I think a lot of us have been so sup­port­ive of this orga­niz­ing and so involved.”

Man­age­ment told the work­ers that GCI’s region­al direc­tor would be meet­ing with the work­ers on August 6 to begin nego­ti­a­tions, but have since refused to rec­og­nize the union with­out an NLRB elec­tion. Work­ers respond­ed to the deci­sion with a com­mu­ni­ty ral­ly in front of the local GCI office at the close of busi­ness on August 7. They had planned to meet with GCI staff as they left for the day. The man­agers in ques­tion, how­ev­er, refused to leave the build­ing with the work­ers present.

The can­vassers have said they will con­tin­ue esca­lat­ing actions until man­age­ment nego­ti­ates with them as a bar­gain­ing unit.