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PREVIOUSLY

• Claiming Infringements on Free Speech Rights, Northcoast Environmental Center Staff Members Strike
• Striking Northcoast Environmental Center Staff Issue Statement

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It’s been almost a month since staffers for the Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC) went on strike, and no progress has been made towards a resolution. 

Larry Glass, the NEC’s public lands director and secretary for their board of directors, said the staffers haven’t responded to any of the NEC’s letters, phone calls, or emails. 

Glass said the NEC was not planning to punish them for forming a union, but the rest of their demands (which include editorial control of the NEC’s publication EcoNews, ceasing contact after work hours, and the right to “self-direct [their] own labor”) were “impractical or impossible to meet.”

“They wanted us to turn the organization’s assets over to them and stop telling them what to do,” Glass told the Outpost in an interview. “That’s the best way I could describe it…There’s no way we could function as a 501(c)(3) if we agree to those demands.”

The strikers have not responded to requests for comment sent to their email or to their Instagram account. 

The union did start a crowdfunding effort on GoFundMe Oct. 1 to replace their lost incomes. It’s raised $309 out of a goal of $4,000 as of publication.

The union’s silence has halted negotiations to a stalemate, though they also claim on social media that the NEC also hasn’t responded to any of their attempts at outreach. An Instagram account claiming to represent the strikers posted an update on Sept. 25 claiming that the board hadn’t told the strikers its views on the strike, nor the five staffers’ unionization last month. 

In the meantime, Glass said the NEC was soldiering along. Their annual Coastal Cleanup Month was left unfinished, and October’s EcoNews wasn’t published. Many members who had set up automatic donations ended them, drastically lowering the NEC’s income — but with all of their staff on strike and no paper to print, their overhead is also low. 

It’s been a struggle to get things going again. According to Glass, a dissection of the EcoNews office after the strike started revealed a trove of uncompleted work and uncashed checks. Office computers had been password protected and were difficult to access. 

He’s not overly optimistic about the possibility of a simple end to the ordeal.

“They’re going to have to really rethink their demands before there could be any forward movement,” Glass said.