Unionized IRC Workers Are Fighting Trump's Attacks On Immigrants While Fighting for a Better Workplace

Workers at the International Rescue Committee have been in negotiations for living wages and Better work conditions. Now they're also fighting to protect their co-workers and clients.

Photo courtesy of IRCWU workers

The International Rescue Committee is the largest non-profit organization providing services for refugee communities around the world. It is also the site of a growing union campaign. Two years ago, workers at the organization’s office in Dallas, TX won an NLRB election, becoming the first office to unionize. Since then, over one dozen more offices throughout the United States joined the union. For the past year the union, IRC Workers Unite — affiliated with OPEIU: Office and Professional Employees International Union — have been bargaining for a contract.

The campaign for better pay and workplace protections has become all the more acute since Donald Trump returned to the presidency. His administration has threatened funding for progressive non-profits, and immigrant communities and their allies have been some of the most targeted by the administration.

I spoke with three IRC workers involved in the union about their experience fighting for a contract. These workers also spoke in depth about how attacks from the Trump administration have directly impacted their frontline work with vulnerable immigrant communities, how their co-workers have been caught up in the attacks, and how this has shaped conversations with IRC management. The workers include Jodi Camino from IRC’s Atlanta office, Nora Rizvi from the Dallas office, and Grace Aguirre from the Oakland office.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the issues that led you all to organize a union and take up this contract campaign?

Jodi Camino: One of the biggest things that my coworkers and I noticed was an issue is that staff turnover is crazy high at IRC. This affects us, and it affects our clients immensely. I've had clients call me because of issues with their food stamps card, and they don't know who they can ask for help, because they've had three different case workers in the last three or four months because of staff turnover. That makes my job harder to do, and obviously it has an impact on clients being able to receive these necessary services.

So my coworkers and I thought we need to be able to make IRC a sustainable career, a sustainable place to work. I love my job. I really don't want to have to leave my job. But I literally, financially, cannot afford to keep doing this job for very much longer. My current salary is not sustainable, and that's the case for a lot of my coworkers, especially co-workers that have children or are sending money back to their family members in their home countries. A lot of our co-workers are immigrants, former refugees, or former clients.

So basically, it's a matter of how do we make our work sustainable. How do we make it possible to actually stay here and do the jobs that we love? Everyone at IRC is motivated by the work that we do, by giving back to our communities. Everyone is here for our clients and for our work. And so it's a question of, how do we make that a sustainable thing that we can actually do, that we as staff can actually afford to do. How can we work without being burnt out emotionally by the pressures and demands of our job, with high caseloads, with the way things are managed and the way we're able to respond to changing political situations? How can we make sure our co-workers can afford to not have to work multiple jobs for sustenance?

So for me, and for a lot of my co-workers in Atlanta, that was sort of how we framed this conversation. We need a union, because we just need a way to improve our workplace. We bring concerns to management, and they say we're working on it and things don't change. A lot of times that's because our local management doesn't really have the authority to do that. We have pretty good local management in Atlanta, but many decisions come from much higher up. Things come from the headquarters level, and without a union, we just didn't have the ability to affect those changes, to make IRC a place where we could actually afford to continue working and doing the work that we want to do, and so the union was kind of a response to that for us.

Nora Rizvi: I can say a little bit more on that too. We in Dallas, we were the first to unionize. So I guess it kind of started from us. We were just not content with management. At that point, we saw the ways they did not care as much as we cared. There was a lot of miscommunication, a lot of funds that we know that were not handled correctly.

I remember being in the program that specifically was for Afghans. We desperately needed to help these clients because there was such a long waitlist for people who needed, like, casework help and employment help and everything like that. But we were just sitting there for months. The manager was not telling us what to do, and when we knew that we had all these funds. That's where a lot of these conversations came up. We were upset because it was not just hurting us as the job we were hired for. It was hurting the clients that were in desperate need for whether it was like Refugee Cash Assistance money or employment help, or help with their casework, applying for benefits that they desperately needed.

So it started with the ideas of like, maybe this is something that we need to do in order to advocate, not just for ourselves in the workplace, but for the clients that we are working for. It felt like we really didn't have a voice at that time, and starting a union felt like it could help us get a voice. We make this job. This is our workplace. At the end of the day, we face clients all the time. We're face to face. You know, sometimes managers or directors, they don't even see clients for, I don't know, for months, weeks, maybe even never. At a certain point when you're not client-facing, you really don't know what's going on. There was just such a large disconnect between the workers and management in our office.

Grace Aguirre: Right when I started, it was my first week, someone was like, “Hey, what do you think about unions?” They had already been working on it for some time, and I was like, “get me in there,” because as I started and got to know my co-workers, it took a few days for me to understand how much people were being overworked and how sad it was. These people have families they need to get back to, but they're staying in the office as late as possible and then working another job. These people are immigrants and refugees themselves, having to work multiple jobs and not being able to get paid at an organization that says they care about immigrants and refugees. I think that was really difficult and challenging to see and be a part of, entering that workplace. I was like, “we have to change this.”

To put it more specifically, it's like this passion extraction that you experience as an employee. I am being asked to do all of this work, to go above and beyond, because I care about my community, because it's personal. Our management knows that it's personal, so they take advantage of that to say, “Oh, well, if you worked overtime, you chose that.” I had to, for example, stay with a client until 9pm due to an emergency, and it was this really tense, horrible situation. But then I had to have a conversation with management where I had to justify my overtime. I know this is a managerial thing, but at the end of the day having some of these discussions makes me question why they are not as passionate or understanding about the client work as we are?

On top of that, a big part of why we started organizing was also because there were folks who worked in the office who were really valuable to their teams who were being laid off, and they were barely given any notice. It was done in a really cruel manner, and we were all just super upset and sad because we were losing coworkers that we cared about, who were passionate about the work, who were doing amazing work and necessary work. So we're just seeing that people were getting laid off, and there was, like, no retention of staff. And it hurts the clients, because then they lose out on these amazing caseworkers who have experience and are passionate about the work. All that to say, I think there's a lot of reasons, but really, I think for me, it was seeing people's passion and care for the work being abused.

What has the contract struggle looked like? How has IRC management responded?

NR: Our first bargaining session was in February 2024. So it's been a while. At that time management had come to Dallas since we were the first office. I’ve been here since the beginning and have seen how management really has that same approach Grace mentioned. They go, “we see that you guys really care about your clients, we see the passion,” and just use that same kind of thing of taking advantage of us emotionally.

Even before our first bargaining session, when we first gave our notice that we wanted to unionize in Dallas, they had like, 15 plus meetings to dissuade us from creating the union. We had multiple higher ups from New York, HQ, come to Dallas, talk to us about what a union is. Very like, “This is what a union is. Are you sure you want that?” Or, “This is what IRC is going to do. We're in the process of doing this. So, you know, you don't really need a union.” Honestly, I'm so proud of our Dallas office because we sat in those meetings that were also required meetings. We sat in those meetings and we talked back, and were like, “You will not tell us that this is what a union is,” like repeatedly.

I would say it's been very emotional. I mean, I think that's just like the realist I could explain it because it's really personal, like we've said before. It's personal what we do, and I think they don't realize that, or they kind of throw it in our faces. It’s very condescending. The way they speak to us feels like we're children. It's frustrating because they've heard multiple accounts from multiple staff about the things they've endured, the working conditions, things that they have had to do, the ways people have worked, multiple jobs. They've heard that so much, I can't even count, and we still don't have a contract. I mean, it's a humanitarian organization. I think it just was shocking because we realized that this is the way that they function. Even though they say all these things about the work they do and the things they put out there.

JC: Every time I hear Nora and the folks from Dallas talk about what starting this first office was like, I'm just shocked. In Atlanta, we had our union election in October of 2024. So we’ve only been at the bargaining table for not quite a year. Honestly, when we first got to bargaining, like I said, our Atlanta management was fairly collaborative. We did not have to deal with the captive audience union-busting meetings that they did in Dallas. Throughout the process we were not really faced with a lot of hostility in our organizing, which isn't to say it wasn't difficult. But I wasn't really expecting the things Nora was talking about when we got to the bargaining table. I was shocked by the condescension, by the seeming apathy, by how out of touch the headquarters folks seem to be with the work that we do, what it means to do this work, what our lives and our work days and our caseloads are like. I was just insulted by the way that we were viewed and seen and the way that we were spoken to. Every time we meet, we tell them stories about things we have been through, things our clients have been through, and it seems to make no difference to them.

GA: We dropped cards in August of last year. We got voluntary recognition, I think sometime in September. That was after a month of us putting pressure on them, and they already knew that we had a majority of the workplace. We were one of the third or fourth offices to unionize, but it took a minute because local management was having a really hard time agreeing to meet with us. And then that's where we experienced what Jodi mentioned, where it was like, “Oh, okayWe can't just tell them our frustrations and expect them to listen again.” We have to organize and show that we care and make a big stink about it essentially. Make that public facing, garnering public support and going from there. And once we got into the national table, it was amazing to see different unionized offices popping onto the Zoom calls. Every time management was stalling, we were organizing and building more power, and I think that's why we've been able to make so many strides in bargaining and get more contract dates.

Where we're at now, we had an in-person bargaining session in New York recently. Folks flew out. We didn't get paid, or took time off, whatever it might be so that we could be in person to bargain with our management. And they are continuing to stall. It was a huge show of our power as a collective. Management is claiming, “Oh, we just don't have time.” Meanwhile, people are suffering. People cannot keep working these jobs. It's unsustainable in its current form, where people are still being exploited, still being harmed, still unable to serve their clients the fullest if they're exhausted. Now management is claiming they can’t meet because they’re on vacation. Meanwhile, workers can't even take vacation because they're told no, because the work is so intense at this time. So it's sort of this ongoing battle where they just give us kind of fluffy responses to not being able to bargain. They need to make time for it, and the fact that they aren't shows that they don't care about their workers. As they continue to do that, we will continue to organize.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for nonprofits, while ramping up attacks on many of the communities that you work with. Has this impacted bargaining at all? How are you navigating the real threat of Trump’s attacks on non-profits while also fighting for more as workers?

JC: Management is already saying “We can't pay you because of Trump.” It’s a line we've heard. Management claims they’re having a hard time committing to treating us better and paying us more because there's so much uncertainty for them. One of my co-workers said if there's so much uncertainty, the staff have uncertainty too. HQ is saying they don't have the stability to promise these raises or provide more support in certain areas. For staff, in this climate, with these immigration policies, we don't have stability, and we need to be able to know that we’re going to have a job next year, and be able to pay for rent next year. Our rent is going to go up.

There are staff members whose immigration status is at risk because of the Trump policies that are removing legal immigration statuses. Not to mention, folks having legal immigration status does not necessarily mean that ICE will not come to your door and detain you. HQ’s lack of acknowledgement of our uncertainty has been the most frustrating thing to me. In this political climate, combined with this organizing and bargaining climate.

Management didn't give us the raises that we were supposed to get last fiscal year, because it would be “financially imprudent,” because there's a lot of uncertainty around where our budgeting is going to fall next year. We don't know what funding the U.S. government will pull, so management says it would be imprudent to give us the raises that we should be getting. Our health care insurance premiums went up, and so all of our paychecks are literally less than what they were last year. More is being deducted, and the base wage did not go up for anybody. But many of our staff are some of the most targeted and at-risk and vulnerable people facing insane amounts of uncertainty because of the Trump administration and its policies.

There’s a disconnect there. They continue to stall, continue to refuse to invest in us and provide support for us when we need stability, and our clients need stability. They can't fix everything, obviously. There will still be uncertainty, but they can help with that. And they say, “No, we're not sure how things are going to fall so you bear all this uncertainty for us.”

NR: It personally affected our Dallas office. One of our colleagues was detained by ICE. He hasn't been given a hearing date with the judge. He got taken from Texas to a different state. That’s honestly the biggest thing impacting us personally. So many of our colleagues have these vulnerable statuses, like Jodi said. How do we talk to our clients if our staff are being affected by the same policies? IRC wasn't really doing anything about it. Our colleague didn't have any funds to help himself. Then the Union came together. We raised money for his legal services. And it's like, as an organization, IRC should prepare better. If your employees might be detained, you should have something to help them out. The union coming together for our co-worker, that’s one of the greatest things about having a union. But why did we have to do that? We had to ask for him to continue to be paid because his vacation days were being used up. We offered our vacation days in exchange. Management was like, “Oh no, we can't do that.” He needs to be paid because he sends money back home for his family. We are the front liners of this, and we don't feel safe. Our co-workers are not safe.

GA: Trump's presidency has hurt morale in the office. It's scaring people. Most of the people who work in the office are people of color, are immigrants. It's horrifying, with all of the vitriol and hatred from the Trump administration that he's fostering in our communities. They can legally, racially profile people, well, ICE can.

I go to people's homes. I go to folks who are undocumented homes. It took a while with pressure from us as a union for us to get directives around our safety and what we should do. We need to have decent know your rights presentations because a lot of time in our programs it's Latino workers going into undocumented Latino people's home. The likelihood that we would be harmed in a raid or something, that's not unlikely. I feel really incredibly proud of our union for being able to put pressure on management to start planning for safety. But it’s just scary, putting ourselves in harm's way every day to do this work.

Beyond that, like for my specific program, the Trump administration tried to shut it down. They failed, but then they created new criteria for sponsorship, and now it's way harder for children to get out of detention or shelter. So now kids are having to sit in these shelters where there’s things like sexual assault, a lot of trauma. It is just a very difficult space, and now they're being forced to sit in those spaces for longer. So that also makes our jobs harder. When kids are then finally released, they are experiencing a lot of uncared for trauma.

Then there’s programmatic changes that just come in because, since we are federally funded, there's things we can't even say anymore in our reports. I'm not allowed to say pregnant person, I'm not allowed to refer to my clients with “they” pronouns, I'm not allowed to mention anything about gender identity or trans identity of our clients. I have to be really intentional around what I write down, because that can be used against the clients that I'm working with. Because now ICE has access to this data, this information.

So it’s a really horrible space to be working in, in regards to the challenges you witness and experience in the workplace, on another hand I feel lucky that children and their families open their doors to me.Unfortunately, there's not any clarity around whether management is actually fighting this or pushing back. It just seems like every time there's a little change, they just roll over and they're like, “Well, let's just accept it and work on our side to figure out how we can adjust.” I have some level of understanding for that, and also it is unfortunate, because I want us to put up a fight, right? We've asked so many times if IRC is putting up a legal fight against all of the horrible shit that's happening against the communities we serve. And they're like, “No, the thing is, we just don't want to risk our funding.” By not standing alongside all these other organizations who are putting up a fight, IRC is weakening them, and also standing alone. That's never a good place to be.