This is Part II in a two-part series begun last week. To read Part I, visit all.org/four-revealing-actions-by-planned-parenthood-people-part-1.
By Jim Sedlak
You can read about the first two revealing actions of Planned Parenthood in Part I of this series. As a recap, those two actions were:
- Planned Parenthood burns the American flag
- Planned Parenthood uses anti-Mexican racial slurs
The third recent incident was brought to light by employees at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York.
Planned Parenthood practices racism in dealing with black employees
PPGNY employees unveiled Planned Parenthood’s internal systemic racism in the form of an open letter to its board of directors, released to the public.
In the letter, Planned Parenthood employees leveled a number of serious charges against management of this affiliate—one of the largest PP affiliates in the country. Among the charges are:
- “Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist, white woman. That is a part of history that cannot be changed.”
- “The BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) staff . . . continue to be invalidated and marginalized. White and non-black employees are still given more pay and more advancement opportunities than their black colleagues.”
- In a statement on equity, PPGNY employees state: “We write this—as a group of both current and former BIPOC employees of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York—to expand on the issues of racism and anti-blackness in our workplace. . . . The PPGNY Senior Leadership team, despite the visual appearance of diversity, has repeatedly weaponized the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Rather than using their true definitions, senior leaders and upper management have used these terms to manipulate and silence those with differing opinions and perspectives. They have leveraged identity politics by putting black and other people of color in positions of leadership who actively participate in harming black staff and other staff members of color below them.”
In general, the news media have treated this outrage of BIPOC employees as an uprising against a single Planned Parenthood affiliate CEO. But our own search on websites where current and former employees of organizations express their views on management found numerous statements made about Planned Parenthood’s “abusive or racist” management in states across the country.
The fourth recent incident is the continuing position of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and unions. Despite publicly receiving union support and working together with the Service Employees International Union on many campaigns . . .
Planned Parenthood discourages union organizing within its affiliates
Over the years, there have been many accounts of Planned Parenthood employees trying to organize a union and being hampered by negative reactions from management. Although Planned Parenthood has been in existence for over 100 years, it only has a half dozen unions among its affiliates.
Officially, the workers at PPGNY say they were “inspired and emboldened by national movements led by black people holding organizations and institutions accountable and working to dismantle systems of oppression and white supremacy.”
But, the story of how its union was treated may have also been a major factor. According to its PPGNY UNION Twitter account, in early 2019, the workers of Planned Parenthood of NYC (PPNYC), now known as Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY), decided to come together and organize with @1199seiu. On August 1, 2019, 100-plus workers celebrated a unanimous vote to be represented by the union. By February 5, 2020, the number of workers in the bargaining unit had increased to 300.
August 1st, 2019 – a unanimous YES!! 153 clinical workers came out on this day to vote to be represented by @1199seiu! Pictured are workers who came out to see the official vote count outside the labor board office. Victory! pic.twitter.com/8fXa6StDr6
— PPGNY Union (@PPGNYUnion) April 15, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic broke a month later, and PPGNY started talking about making major changes in personnel, the union went to work, and according to its Instagram page and a chron.com article, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, which represents some of the affiliate’s workers, says it proposed alternative cost-cutting measures, such as stopping 401K contributions for all unit members, reducing salaries over $90,000 by 10 to 30 percent, reducing employment from full time to part time or per diem, and reducing vacation time, in hopes of avoiding layoffs and furloughs. The union’s efforts were rejected out-of-hand by management, as PPGNY spokeswoman Jacquelyn Marrero said: “We appreciate the solutions that the bargaining unit brought forth, however they would not have allowed us to prevent the reduction in staff we need to make.”
This action of ignoring union input is, according to a 2018 article by Rewire.News, standard practice for Planned Parenthood. One example given in the article was about when employees tried to unionize at Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina (PPCNC). “Management became very nasty,” Jessica Rubio told Rewire.News. “There was a lot of blatant intimidation.” Management began scheduling mandatory anti-union meetings as well as pulling workers aside in the hallway and telling them a union would hurt Planned Parenthood.
Rubio and her colleagues eventually won their union election, but management dragged out contract negotiations for so long that many workers ended up leaving and the bargaining unit dissolved.
The article also describes an almost identical scenario when Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains employees were trying to unionize.
As incredible as it seems, despite its anti-union operations, Planned Parenthood enjoys the public support of SEIU and other unions!
In this two-part series, we have brought you just a sampling of the anti-American activities of Planned Parenthood:
- It burns the American flag.
- It uses anti-Mexican racial slurs for political purposes.
- Internally, it is a racist organization.
- It opposes unionization of its workforce, and if bargaining units are formed, ignores them.
We hope this two-part series will help people realize the total horror that is Planned Parenthood. In addition to its killing of over 340,000 preborn babies a year and the millions of children it leads into lives of sexual sin, Planned Parenthood will do anything to force its will on the American public. It has no problem disrespecting our country’s symbols while targeting minorities (especially blacks and Latinos). Planned Parenthood has absolutely no respect for the American worker and for their right to form unions. It wants two things—to kill our preborn children and to do it with our money!
Jim Sedlak is executive director of American Life League, founder of STOPP International, and host of a weekly talk show on the Radio Maria Network. He has been successfully fighting Planned Parenthood since 1985.
