Has the potential for greater impact, run by ‘old guard’ that has been out of touch for a long time.
Pros
The majority of staff have been hired within the last 3 years. They’re some of the most brilliant minds this country has to offer.
Cons
They can recruit but they can’t retain. - Low salaries for talent that they should make an effort to keep around longer. - Constant cycle of newer staff being paid slightly better than those hired before them. This keeps newer staff under a veneer and facade at least for a little while until they catch on to the awful realities of working at UnidosUS. - Turnover is ridiculous. Every week it’s a couple more people leaving. Currently 21 jobs listed and they can’t fill them because pay/benefits are not competitive. - No union to protect staff. - Promotions are a joke to leadership. - Their racial equity team conflates race with ethnicity in their work. They’ve appointed leads to the team that don’t actually have any educational or work experience in the field. Dangerous mistake. - White Latinos and staff in closer proximity to whiteness experience far more privilege than Black and Afro-Latino staff. - Many staff members and top senior leaders are hesitant to center Black and Afro-Latino lives in their work. - Comfortable place for senior leaders who want to maintain the power they’ve held over 25+ years. Awful place for anyone thinking about growth. - Staff will sometimes get about a 4% annual increase (not guaranteed). But the 990 forms from 2004 to 2018 show that some senior leaders have gotten on average at least 9% in annual salary increases. - Policy strategies are extremely top-down, not bold enough, and not community centered. Big miss for the organization, as the policy field has shifted to be more community based. - Individual staff members are responsible for covering the organization’s lack of a comprehensive paid family leave by donating time to each other. This puts new parents in a position where they have to ask for donated time. Leadership will approach this as the “charitable” thing to do so that we somehow feel better about it. The org advocates for 6 weeks paid family leave externally but doesn’t offers that to staff internally. - Huge disconnect between UnidosUS’s external and internal values. On salaries: - One senior leader even mentioned that “we should have known what we were signing up for” when staff elevated concerns about low salaries. - Another senior leader mentioned that “nobody comes to UnidosUS to get paid.” I recommend any candidate considering applying to UnidosUS to review the org’s 990 forms to see for yourself that it is a VERY financially healthy organization. It can afford to do right by staff and offer more decent wages. But it doesn’t. The org prides itself on working to better Latino generational wealth across the country but keeps its own staff at embarrassingly low wages. Staff raised concerns on how they don’t have access home ownership with the salaries that UnidosUS offers, CEO pretended she lost internet connection when this issue was brought up in an all-staff meeting. The leadership from the CEO, to VPs, have a lot of soul searching to do. Until then (or when new and ethical leaders are elevated), the org will keep losing top talent. I would not recommend working for UnidosUS.