Hey, y'all it's Aaron. For the last 10 days, I have been frantically working on a local labor rights story. It's a doozy and I'm very proud of it, but it's also 4,000 words. And I know some of you prefer to listen to your news, especially when a story is that long. So here's a quick summary and stick around for the full episode to hear Val ocher and I dive deep into this story. And even some behind the scenes details that didn't make the page. Planned parenthood of greater Washington and Northern Idaho has a long track record of providing reproductive healthcare, including abortions across our region and reputation as fierce defenders of bodily autonomy, and the right to choose. In recent years though, the organization, which is made up of 11 clinics located mostly in Eastern and central Washington. Has expanded its advocacy to include local voter registration drives. Know your rights trainings for Latino farm workers. And lobbying the state government to raise the minimum wage, but last month, executive leadership at planned parenthood of greater Washington and Northern Idaho, commonly abbreviated to PP Gwynnie. Made it clear their advocacy for workers' rights had limits in early November. Carl Eastland, P P Glenys. He's CEO. Contracted with the labor relations Institute, an organization that calls itself one of the oldest labor relations consultants in the country and has been described as quote corporate America's favorite union busting firm. For over a year Eastlands rank and file employees have been organizing to unionize. PP Gwynnie. Eastland is paying LRI $425 an hour to try to talk them out of it. Range talk to six current and former employees about their experience at PP Gwynnie, some left because of the working conditions. Some have stayed and are fighting to unionize. One was a manager who wants their staff to unionize, but is at odds with the anti-union talking points. They were supposed to spout to employees. Anyways, it's a long story, but it's a good one. It's a necessary one about the people in power pitting, reproductive rights against labor rights, stay tuned and we'll jump into it. Alrighty folks, I'm Erin and you're listening to KYRS Medical Lake Spokane. This is Free Range, a co production of KYRS and Range Media. You might not recognize that voice. This is our audience editor, Val Ogier, who is stepping in today because poor Luke is ill and I cannot describe what kind of illness on the air or we might get an FCC violation. All right, so today we are going to be talking about a couple things. Namely I've been burning the midnight oil for the last week on a labor rights story that finally after Many tears and tantrums and honestly, it was a little bit like having a child. I think I felt like I was in labor. It went live today. So we're gonna be filling you in on that big ol story in case you're not somebody who feels like reading 4, 400 words. You should still try to read the 4, 400 words. You should still try to read the words. This is true. They're good words. Okay, so Yeah, this is Valerie Osher filling in for Luke Baumgarten. B T W. So, Erin, let's talk about your story. First, I think let's start with what set this whole story off? Okay, there's two answers to that question. First ostensibly, the real answer is that last week I'm off Twitter these days, and I saw a A blue sky a blue sky, I think they call them skeets a blue sky post from a labor rights reporter out in Florida who had dug up some legal documents showing that it was a disclosure report filed with the U. S. Department of Labor. And she had tweeted that oh, Planned Parenthood hired one of the nation's most well known union busting firms, and I'm looking at this and I'm like, wow, Planned Parenthood, that's kind of disappointing. And then I look at the legal documents and I realize Oh, my God, that's our Planned Parenthood. That's the local Planned Parenthood. And that's the Planned Parenthood of Washington, D. C. Greater Washington and North Idaho. There we go. They call it p. Gwinney. Okay. Is what you'll hear a lot of the employees or people who are familiar with it call it. So this is what set off my sort of week of frantic reporting. I think the tweet, or the skeet, sorry, was posted ten days ago. I saw it two or three days after it was posted. It's literally been almost exactly a week since I started working on this story. But I'd heard about it. Almost a year ago, I would say, I was interviewing a local activist, organizer advocacy professional who was pitching me on a story about hospital mergers and hospital consolidation that I did end up writing. It took quite a bit of research, but it was a story about a bill moving through the Washington state legislature that that I ended up writing. And as she was pitching me on this story, she was like, Well, you know, I do have another kind of healthcare related story. I used to work at Planned Parenthood. And she told me kind of the events that led up to her leaving Planned Parenthood, which were, you know, some poor working conditions, and she was asked to take on a supervisor's job duties while he was on parental leave and was given no extra pay for that, and that kind of, it sounded like, burned her out, ran her into the ground a little bit. She started looking for other jobs. She found something and she realized when she got the job offer that Oh, I really don't want to leave Planned Parenthood. Like as much as I'm burned out and not making enough money, I love the other people here. I love the mission. So she came to Planned Parenthood and was like, Hey, like I got this other job offer. Here's what they're offering me. Could you match that or give me a raise? And I'd love to stay. And they just told her no. And then, a little while later, and she just told me this after the story went up but they posted her job after she left, at the same salary rate that she was asking for, and got told no. Oh, wow. She was like, well, they just didn't want me. But anyway, so a year ago she tells me this and she's you know, there's a lot more where that came from. There's a lot of people who had similar experiences to me. There's been a lot of rumblings around. About a year ago. I also know, or this summer I also met some friends who one friend used to work for the Planned Parenthood, the local one, and she had quit to work. At a grocery store and where she makes more money. She makes more money. She wasn't a medical professional, but she was like, I think an admin or something. And then she had another friend who also had a similar experience. And so we had been hearing about this for a while, but what I mean, obviously the, these the paperwork that was filed with the federal Organization, the federal government kicked off this story, but what was holding you back from reporting this say a year ago when you first heard it was sourcing. So I had this one gal who would have gone on the record probably, but if you just have one person's story about a bad workplace environment, it can read just Oh, disgruntled employees, mad that they didn't get more money. So they go to the press and It didn't feel like that's all that story was to me. It felt like there was more of a, like a culture issue. More of a bigger story there. And she, I had mentioned that I was interested in it, if she could find anybody else who was willing to talk to me. And I know that you actually asked your friend right around, like when you heard about the story, asked her if she'd want to talk to us. And everybody back then was just, it seemed, A little scared a little bit like they might be risking retaliation, even if they were out of the industry and like working at a grocery store. Or they still worked at the place and wanted to keep their jobs. And so I just, I could never nail down enough sources to tell a story that wasn't just one person's bad experience. When this, when these documents dropped, I sent them to somebody else who I knew had worked at Planned Parenthood besides this gal. And I was like, hey, did you see this? Obviously unionizing must be happening because they're now paying a union busting firm 425 an hour to come in and try to preemptively convince employees not to unionize. And he was like, oh my God, no, I hadn't seen this. Let me send this to everybody I know who used to work there. And I think these documents sort of got spread around he sent them to people, I'm sure the people he sent them to people who either currently or formerly work there, and I was like, look, I want this story see if any of these people who are angry about these documents, I mean, to find out that information. You're asking for a raise or you're asking for better working conditions. And real quick, like how there was a number mentioned for, I think one of the medical assistants, how much were they making an hour for context? Yes. So they have a salary band system. I was never able to figure out like nobody from Planned Parenthood would ever tell me like exactly what that was, but the bands that like medical assistants, front desk staff would make healthcare assistants, they call them. Was between 17 and 25 an hour and that could be determined by like your experience coming in or like how long you've been there, whether or not you've gotten cost of living raises from them. But that range meant that like they were paying. For the equivalent of 17 to 25 medical assistants per hour for one hour of Union busting contracting it's quite an investment and I think That number that like kind of starkness and there wasn't a lot of detail in this labor disclosure Was pretty much just like here's the contract. Here's what it's for. Here's the rate you're getting paid But I think that was enough to sort of set off a spark. And people started actually being willing to go on the record and talk to me about their experiences. Yeah, I think a lot of I guess regular folks don't know this, you know, about the process of reporting. You know, we, you know, Sometimes we hear about things that are happening and you know, people are coming up with, are coming to us with very credible and stories that we want to report about. We need to report about in order to, you know, bring light to these issues. But the thing that will sometimes shake that story loose is a document dropping because that document is, you know, infallible proof, but it's concrete proof of what these people are experiencing. And so that happens often where something not often, but that is usually how a story gets shaken loose from being on hold for a while. So for this For this document What did it, is it a disclosure of just saying, like, Why does the government have to see this? Or why did Planned Parenthood have to file this document? Yeah, I'm actually not 100 percent sure. I mean, they are, like, Non profit, I think. And they They, you know, they have 990 forms that they have to file. They have to, you can view a lot of their financial information. I'm actually not sure why these contracts get filed with the Labor Department, but I do know that it's like a pretty Standard thing. We discovered during the process of reporting this newsletter that goes out that's like the union busting newsletter and every time a document like this gets filed that's like a disclosure of a contract with a union busting or like they might call it like a union avoidance firm. Or a labor relations firm. They've got all of these lovely little euphemisms for it, but when these contracts get filed this newsletter like collates them and sends them out to you and it's oh, union busting activities in Minnesota. So, you know, maybe I'll get more tips this way. And I think that is how the original reporter had found the documents is through that news newsletter. So I guess the long answer is that I'm not actually sure why they're required to file them, but they are it's like a agreement and activities report This one was for The services provided by the Labor Relations Institute, but their consulting arm, so Labor Relations, LRI Consulting, was to persuade employees to exercise, or not to exercise, or persuade employees as to the manner of exercising the right to organize and bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing. Which is very strange, sort of, Euphemistic nothing burger language, but then you scroll through like this company's website and they were known as Like the nation's oldest or corporate America's favorite union busting firm They're one of the oldest labor relations consultants They used to do this thing where if you paid them a flat 50, 000 They would guarantee that your workplace would not unionize your money back should Okay, never mind. No, I'm like, cause, I mean, we're worker owned, so we wouldn't unionize. Yeah, we own ourselves. I mean, like, how can we game that system? And their website has some, Kind of hilarious materials on it for an organization that's kind of trying to present this neutral front. It's Oh, stop wondering. Are we going to make it through this? We can help you turn my employees don't trust me into my employees don't trust the union's empty promises. Oh, wow. Yeah, they also, and this was interesting, because when I called Planned Parenthood and the CEO like a couple times to give them a chance to comment on this, and finally I just started emailing their communications department, called their communi like And I got this very boilerplate response back that basically boiled down to Oh, we're preparing for a hostile administration. The, oh, from Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is preparing for a hostile national administration. Yes, so I can read you the statement. It said Sorry, it said Okay. At p. Gwinney, we're proud to pay our employees competitive wages and benefits that are consistently above market. Our staff have received raises and bonuses each year for the past seven years. The employee turnover at p. Gwinney is exceptionally low, especially when compared to other healthcare organizations. We also believe every employee has the right to decide whether or not to be represented by a union. We believe employees have a right to make informed decisions when independently considering contractual agreements that could have an impact on their work environment. As we prepare to face a hostile administration in 2025, there are many daunting challenges ahead. We are focused on being there for our communities in Central and Eastern Washington and keeping clinics open so we can best serve people that rely on Planned Parenthood for vital care. And so that's what they're telling me. And then you turn around and you look at what LRI, this company that they're paying for. 425 an hour or two is posting and it's like LinkedIn posts about how, you know, employers shouldn't clutch their pearls about new union regulations because with the Republican presidency many pro union rulings like these and others will be reversed. And oh, you know, there's no rest for the weary when unions have their foot in the door. You know, all this stuff that's with Donald Trump headed back to the White House, expect major shifts at the National Labor Relations Board. All this stuff that seems Counter to Planned Parenthood's mission and values. Yeah, and I found that to be another wrinkle of this story that was maybe a little harder to pin down, but just the amount of hypocrisy, their CEO was sending emails out to all the staff being like, I believe in your right to choose, and that's what he's putting out to staff, is do what you want, I support you, and then he's turning around and paying the hourly wage of 17 medical assistants to try to get somebody to convince them not to unionize. Yeah. I mean, so let's talk about the CEO. Cause I think that was one of the most egregious. One of the things that, you know, made my blood boil while reading the story was how much the CEO is being paid compared to the regular workers who are doing the work every day, but also in comparison to the head medical person of Planned Parenthood, who is a medical doctor, a woman Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about of what the CEO's pay started as? When did he start? Actually, what's his name real quick. Okay. His name is Carl Eastland. Okay. And he started, I want to say it was like mid 2010s. I mostly looked at the last five years because that's when you started to see big shifts in people's salaries before it just seemed to be like You know, like little raises Oh, you went from 160, 000 to 165, 000. Like nothing that would be incredibly egregious or spark my attention. And then that is. That's a normal ish salary for a CEO. CEOs get paid a lot. And to be fair to this guy, like when we talk about the local Planned Parenthood, we're not just talking about the clinic in Spokane. This is like an affiliate. So it's kind of a bundle of Planned Parenthood clinics. There's 11 of them, and they're spread. There's one in Yakima, I think. Ellensburg, Pullman Spokane Valley. It's 11 clinics that are east of Seattle. So, so it's not that he's just getting paid to manage one clinic. And I do want to be fair to him on that front. But I was really struck, there was this woman who talked to me, she's still an employee there, so I had to use a pseudonym for her. When she started, she made 19 an hour she ended up getting a cost of living adjustment raise, and she now makes a couple more dollars an hour, so she went from 19 to something like 22, 23. That same year, the CEO, Carl Eastland, tells the Sightline Institute that Without additional funding, the organization might be forced to reduce preventative care, primary care, and mental health services in order to meet the urgent need for abortion health care. Within the year though, between 2022 and when they did their financial reporting in 2023, Eastland's pay had jumped by 100, 000. And this was sort of the end of a series of increases that saw his compensation double between 2019 and 2023. So as this like rank and file employee is Oh yay! I get an extra 3 an hour! This guy is now making double what he was making in 2019. Double. What's that final number when it's doubled? Yes, his final number, and this was at the end of 2023, so we don't know what he's making this year because I'm pulling a lot of these numbers from their 990 tax filings, but at the end of last year he was making 460, 000. He also got other compensation at 29, 000. We were unsure if that was Benefits, bonuses, or some combination of both. So he, with that 29, 000, he made almost 500, 000 last year. And another thing happened during this time As he mentioned to Sightline Institute they did cut a lot of their services. So what one was like a mobile clinic, is that right? Yes. So this is kind of when I came across this story, right? So we'll say her name. She was a name source in the story, Sarah Dixit, who is now an organizer for Pro Choice Washington. She had been like, In charge of helping set up these mobile clinics, they were called RAIS, and they took clinics out into farm workers, like they took them to farms, and they helped connect migrant farm workers with medical care. They had folks who could speak Spanish go out with them. They did all of this outreach where it wasn't just Oh, we'll come treat your boo and leave it was also like we will treat you for what you need and we will start like Establishing connections with you. Do you need access to other services? Do you need to be connected to other people like primary care or like Immigration services they had all of these resources that they were going out into the community and connecting people with Meeting them where they were at In a way that maybe these folks would not have felt like care was accessible to them, especially like working in rural farmlands. It was an amazing program, and it just sort of like quietly first got cut way back. So they cut it back and they were like, it costs too much to send providers out because to be fair, while medical assistants were making like 17 to 25 dollars an hour, They do pay really well for medical clinicians. So this is like somebody who's a doctor, a physician. They pay between 60 and 80 an hour. Oh, okay. Sorry. Which is, I've been told, the equivalent, one of the sources I talked to called it like golden handcuffs. Okay. But that's expensive, right? You send somebody out who's making 80 an hour for a full 12 hour day, that costs a lot of money. So instead of sending the clinicians out, they were just sending some of the folks from the public affairs team, which Sarah Dixit was on, to just go do Oh, God. Connections, and talk to people, and you know, build community, but not actually providing medical services. So maybe you can help connect them to other resources, but you're not coming out with a doctor and giving them what they need. And so that kind of quietly got scaled back to just this community connection thing, and then died. When did it get scaled back, do you know? I want to say it was either 2022 when it got scaled back in 2023 when it died, or it got scaled back over the summer of 2023 and died in 2024, which now that I'm saying it out loud, that sounds correct. I think the summer of 2023 was when they were like just doing, you know, community connection events. And then this summer, it just didn't come back. And in that time, the CEO's salary. Yeah, was rose a lot. Okay. And ostensibly his salary probably rose a lot again between 2023 and 2024 if it's following the pattern of the last couple of years. And so like Sarah Dixit was pretty frustrated both with that and she was a, at the time she was doing like advocacy. So she was going to state legislatures both in Washington and Idaho and she was doing know your rights trainings for people who might. And she was doing voter drives. And was she doing this as a representative, as part of Planned Parenthood? As part of her role at Planned Parenthood. And I got hold of a document Again, this morning, so I didn't actually get to include it in the story because it, you know, when we publish something, it's usually after it's been through multiple rounds of edits. So it was too late to include this, but I got ahold of a document from a presentation given to this public affairs team that stated that they needed to refocus on communities with the greatest potential impact for voter mobilization. So basically. Stop spending so much time with people who are undocumented, spend your time with people who can vote. Wow. But the phrasing they used was, Grants and priority of mobile migrant outreach changing. Need to phase out and pivot to other work. Mobile clinics not coming back. Rais needs to refocus on communities with greatest potential impact for voter mobilization. And Dixit had A problem with that, and I think was feeling, you know, unfulfilled in her work, and right around the same time, everybody, so Dixit leaves, turns in her resignation, and within a week, everybody else on this public affairs team was demoted. Wow. So, they were demoted from One was public affairs manager titles and then they get demoted down to just organizer. It did not come with a pay cut. So I do want to clarify that their pay wasn't cut, but they did lose a title that they had held and I think felt a lot of significant loss around what this program was and what it was turning into. And also I think, I'm just surmising here, but it probably would be really hard and all of these are people are women of color, right? And they're being told like don't go out and serve this community because they can't vote in the 2024 election. And that's so interesting. Recently I spoke I was at a conference with a bunch of nonprofits and I spoke to a woman who her nonprofit is specifically geared towards Latina like mobilizing Latinas, Latina women and Latinos in general. And she said We got more turnout and we were able to flip our district because we mobilized the Latino population, whether or not they are like, like obviously like undocumented people weren't voting, but they're still part of a community and that community, like activating that community can be powerful in the interest you know, in voting for workers interests, immigrant interests I worked on a story earlier this year around what do Latina voters want in this election, and one of the folks I talked to was undocumented, but they were doing a ton of work in their social circles and familial structures because they had a sibling who was documented and of age to vote, to be like, hey I can't do this for myself if you love me and care about me. Please do your civic duty and think about people like me when you're doing it. Right. So, yeah, it kind of feels like by throwing out this program the RISE program, they're kind of just throwing out the baby with the bathwater and continuing Throwing out the baby with the bathwater might be an insensitive decision to make about a Planned Parenthood story. Whoops. Well, the other interesting thing, so they both get demoted and I think I wasn't able to interview either of these women for my story. Both of them one of them just didn't respond to my calls and one of them gave me a no comment, but I have in documents like what their names are. One of them is city council member Lily Navarrete and the other is Fabiola Lopez who they both end up leaving Planned Parenthood, right? She's appointed to council. Fabiola now works for UFCW 3000, which is the union organizing Planned Parenthood. She works in their like grocery store division because they are also the union for like grocery store workers. So I don't think she's like directly touching this. I don't know. I wasn't able to get ahold of her. Actually the union itself and like the six different people at the union that I called all no commented me or just didn't call me back. But I did find that pretty interesting that you have this like Tight knit unit. And another thing that I wasn't actually able to put in this story is that like Mackenzie Scott Jeff Bezos's ex wife She's a philanthropist too. She is and she gave the local PP Gwinney 12 million dollars. She did not really make it clear what exactly she was giving them that money for but she gave them that money after a representative from her foundation was at an event where The folks from the RAIS program were talking about the success of their program. So it's not something that I can ever prove. It's not something I can put in a reported story. But one thing that I heard from Sarah Dixit was that It felt like we did all this work. It was really impactful work. We all really liked doing it And we got you know statewide recognition for that. There's a photo of sarah and lily navarette with Governor insley, and at these like events where they were presenting about the amazing work They were doing a representation from the scott foundation sees them there and then Shortly after planned parenthood gets 12 million dollars you know And then, the Rais program quietly dies. Off topic how do I get an audience with the Scott Foundation? Yeah, I don't know, if you are a listener out here who knows how to put Val Osher in contact with Mackenzie Scott. No, I'm kidding, I can't tell you to do anything. Oh, mackenzie, if you're out there. Mackenzie, call me. Call me. She is single, right? She might be married, actually. Oh, I don't know. So, I think another thing, an interesting thing piece of context is that during this time where this 2019 to 2023 portion of time where the COVID 19 You know, they're kind of cutting down on services. The CEO is making more money. And There were, there was another pay raise. So originally Denise, I'm sorry, how do you spell it? I think it's Bayoussic. Bayoussic, Denise Bayoussic. I'm just taking my best crack at that though. So if I'm wrong, I'm so sorry. She's Planned Parenthood's chief medical officer. And at first in 2019, she made the most, according to the organization, organization's tax filing, which was 275, 000. And that was more than the CEO. So, But then, by 2020, the CEO was making 363, 000. And her salary has stayed, she's gotten raises, but small ones. Oh, I mean, it looks like, yeah I'm looking at this line. As of 2023 Carl Eastland, the CEO, makes 460, 000, and Biasik, who is in charge of she's the chief medical officer, so if we're saying oh, we're locking down all of these other services, it is, and more. Only thinking about providing abortions and healthcare, like we're refocusing on this. She makes over 100, 000 less than him at 312, 000. Wow. And she's, you know, the one overseeing like all of the medical operations of these 11 clinics. Yeah, I mean like how, so you described earlier about the clinicians kind of having golden handcuffs, like they are well compensated for their work. What do you think is behind underpaying? You know, the support staff and that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, so medical assistants aren't super well paid anywhere. That's fair that you don't have to like, I don't think you have to, I think it's a certification. You don't have to do the whole, you know, eight year med school thing. But, like, when I compared plan, and I know they told me in their statement oh, you know, our salaries are better than the areas, but I looked up just oh, medical assistant jobs in Spokane or medical assistant jobs in Yakima, and most of the medical assistant jobs that I saw posted paid. A, not much more, but like a dollar or two more as the starting wage, and then like a dollar or two more at the like high end cap. So like the scale, like Planned Parenthood was at the lower end of that. And I think that, There are more people available who are qualified to be a medical assistant than there are who are qualified to be clinicians. And I think there's this, I mean what we ended up titling my story after a little bit of push pull, sorry Val It was like the mission doesn't pay the bills, and I think there's this idea behind the scenes in, I interviewed six current and former employees who, some off the record, some on the record, but one thing that almost all of them had in common was that they were like, this was my dream job I Really believe in the work that Planned Parenthood is doing. I really want to help people get access to affordable health care I really want to help protect people's right to choose I love that like Planned Parenthood is a place that serves people of all genders like I love that they do not discriminate based off of sexuality or gender and They really believed in the work that they were doing and they really loved their co workers And I think that it's, I mean, that's a little bit like every nonprofit, right? Like they rely on you buying into the mission and once you care Then that makes you a little bit easier to exploit if you're like I am You know i'm saving the world out here And yeah Maybe the place I work doesn't have money to paint what I deserve, but I feel like I'm really making the world a better place. I'm having a positive impact in people's lives. Like I would also be willing to take a little bit of a pay cut. And I think just starting to see Oh, I'm, you know, I'm accepting a little bit of a pay cut. And a lot of these people told me that they turn around and every month they donate a portion of their paycheck back to Planned Parenthood. And of course, yeah, that's like a little bit of a tax write off or whatever. Yeah. But they're like, yeah, I like, not only am I getting underpaid, but I'm also donating my labor back to this place that I work. And I think seeing some of the numbers laid out, okay, I'm willing to do this, and my boss is paying 425 an hour to a union busting firm. My boss has doubled his salary since 2019. My boss got a 100, 000 raise last year. And here I am, like, putting my blood, sweat, tears, heart, and soul into this place. And interfacing with the people who are most impacted by this and who are going through Traumatic things or like even normal life, but like they're doing the work and they're exposed to all of that. Heartache, and you know, that, that stress. Carl Eastland is not giving pap smears or providing abortion services. And yes, his name is attached. He's the only name listed on their leadership page with the picture attached because there is an inherent risk that comes with working at Planned Parenthood. And that comes with being a leader at Planned Parenthood. And again, I really want to be fair to this guy. His picture and name is what is attached to Planned Parenthood Gwynny. However. Clinicians and medical assistants are also dealing with a very real fear. Let's say you, you know, you've worked at Planned Parenthood for five years. Your partner gets a job. It's across the border in Idaho. So you're like, well, you've got a great opportunity. Let's pack up and move our family to Idaho. You get over there and you go to look for a medical job and you might get rejected for jobs because they see that you were providing abortions across the border, which is Illegal in Idaho. It's does that make you unhirable? People are now worrying that oh if I provide a service To somebody within Washington where I live where I work where it's legal But then that person turns out to be like a resident of Texas or Idaho. Am I gonna get sued or extradited or Like in trouble and that risk and burden is mostly being shouldered by clinicians and medical assistants and people who are actually like providing these services. And who are the least paid. The least paid, the most vulnerable. I I wanted to pull out this quote that really I think sums up the story very well. It's from from a woman named Laura. She said, It does no service to the reproductive health movement to chew up and spit out workers. She described her former co workers at P. P. Guiney as lovely mission driven people and the administration as, quote, a bunch of evil hyenas. And I know that last part was your favorite part. But I, I think the first part is really important because there is a very real threat to reproductive health rights in the U. S., specifically with the next administration coming in and seeing, you know, the, there's a threat from the outside, but there's also the threat from the inside, and if we're not treating our workers right in any case, in any place it really dampens the values and mission that you espouse. Yeah, it just rankled me to see their statement like pitting reproductive rights against workers rights of like we're not thinking about that We're thinking about the challenges of the administration It's like how are you going to face the challenges of the next administration? If your employees are wildly unhappy like one person Overworked underpaid understaffed, right? and so I guess like I guess I'm asking you to put on a little bit of a speculative hat, but like how does Planned Parenthood move forward from this? I mean, obviously this story, we just published it this morning. You know, nothing's exploding yet, but what do they do to regain people's trust, their workers trust and their, the public's trust? You know, I don't know, but I can tell you what's not going to gain your workers trust, and it is Hiring union busting firms to come in and give them informational sessions that they are told they're supposed to attend. Or directing them to an in house website that you've created just to inform them about unions. Where you know, list questions commonly asked questions that are, like, Oh, can the union come to my house or my family's house and find me? Yeah, the direct quote was, Can the union organizers come to my home, my family's home, or other places and find me? I signed a union authorization card, but I changed my mind. Can I get it back? Like this is the non bias information. And to be honest, and like this was maybe the harshest line in my story. But as I was writing it, I was struck by this idea that like the way Planned Parenthood was approaching The issue of are my employees going to unionize? Do they want to unionize? It just reminded me of how these crisis pregnancy centers handle people who are wondering what to do about a pregnancy. And they, you know, they come at you with all of this one sided information that's designed to scare you into, you know, Scary, or it's very carrot stick, you know? Oh if you have this child, here's all of the wonderful things that will happen in your life. And if you don't have this child, or if you have an abortion, here's all of the really scary health risks. And they're, like, posing as a place that helps you with your right to choose. And what they're doing is they're force feeding you one sided information full of scare tactics. And to me, It just struck me that is so similar to what PP Gwinney is doing with unionizing. They're like, we support you and your right to choose. Here's all of this information so you can be informed about the choices you make. And then the information they're providing them is like extremely one sided and oh, union dues can get really high. And oh, if you are in a union, it'll all come down to seniority, not merit or talent or other factors as to when you get raises. And. I don't know, it just disappointed me. And I Am slash used to be a patient of Planned Parenthood like not to overshare on the airwaves But I got my IUD in there like when I was in college, and I just lived in Washington I didn't know where to get health care and I lived near one of the health centers at the time and I was like You know, everything I've heard is that these places are welcoming and safe for queer people. So if I just show up and ask about health care if they can't help me, they'll probably be able to help me find somewhere that can. And to find out that my very lovely clinicians and medical assistants and front desk staff that helped me and treated me with grace and made what I get really stressed out in doctors offices or in hospitals and they made the experience a lot safer and more welcoming to, for me, and to find out the, what they're having to deal with behind the scenes was pretty heartbreaking. So I don't really know where they go from here, it's not there are so many things I could say and can't say, or shouldn't say, but I get it. I feel like it's pretty fair to say that paying for union busting firms to come in and speak to your employees is maybe not how you rebuild trust. Yeah. So just to review for anybody who's just joining us we are talking about Aaron's latest story about employees at the local plant or the regional Planned Parenthood organization are considering unionization over what they characterize as low pay and bad working conditions. But the CEO of Planned Parenthood. The regional Planned Parenthood is paying a union vesting firm the equivalent of 17 medical assistance's hourly wages to persuade them not to. I actually just got a text from one of the employees I interviewed. I used I used them anonymously because they were a big part of, they are a big part of unionization efforts. there and, you know, publishing their name could lead to very clear Oh, you're unionizing, get fired. Yeah. Even though that is illegal, correct. Yes, but it's not illegal to fire somebody for a different reason that you just so happen to come up with at the same time that they spoke to the press and they just texted me and said that they'd shared the story in the unionizing Discord and that workers are feeling very empowered after reading exclamation point which it's always good to hear considering that I haven't slept and I'm full of stress about this but Yeah, You I can vouch for Erin that Erin has been very stressed about this story. What Val's saying is that I've been cranky and snappy, but she's very diplomatic about it. You've been doing great, Erin. I almost bit her head off this morning. I was getting my hair dyed and I was supposed to have the morning off and Val's Sending me all these questions about the story, and I'm like, I've already discussed that with Luke. I've already discussed that with the other editor. Post the story, please! But, you know, it's better for all of the eyes that have been on it. Yeah, and Yeah, speaking of eyes, um, I, let's talk about how we went about reporting and editing this story because you are friends. Yes. With one of your sources. Sarah Dixon. And I, what's interesting with the story is that we weren't friends when this story got pitched to me. Yeah. It was, like, our first or second time meeting. I was talking to them as a journalist about another story when they pitched me on this. Over the course of the last year, I think a friendly source journalist relationship has evolved into something that's more of a friendship which, you know, could be something at a mainstream news outlet where that disqualifies you from writing the story. For us, we talk a lot about community journalism, and what it means to be in and part of community, as much as we want to distance ourselves from things and claim I'm above it all, I'm not biased that's just probably not the truth for anybody. You live in your community, you know people, you are a person with opinions and feelings. And part of the reason that We got this story, and got the sources for this story, are because I built trust with people. Over a long span of time. Over a long span of time. And eventually that trust with Sarah, I would say, turned into a friendship. We hang out outside of work stuff. We talk about things that are not reproductive rights. But also, In our minds, we had a pretty big conversation about that. That shouldn't necessarily mean that I don't get to report the story. It might actually mean that I am the best person to report the story because people trust me enough to talk to me about these vulnerable, risky things. And so what we ended up deciding to do to kind of mitigate that risk of potential bias was to We did our traditional in house edit with one of our editors on staff, and then on the advice of our community advisory board, which includes nationally recognized journalism folks, like Lisa Hayamoto and Ryan Pitts. Who are Spokane people. Spokane people, and nationally recognized people. We love How good Spokane's media landscape is, but they advised that we hire an editor that was completely separate from range. So, we have a freelance editor named Zach, who we work with for stories quite often, who knows us all pretty well but our advisory board recommended we work with somebody new. Somebody preferably from mainstream journalism, who has kind of a cold, hard eye for bias in news. So, we ended up hiring Addy Hatch, who is an old spokesman reporter, to come in and do the final read and edit on the story. Just to, A, do a good content edit. Do my sentences make sense? Did Luke get all of the grammar mistakes on his first edit? No, he did not. No, he did not. He is So good at helping me make my sentences sound beautiful and so bad at helping me figure out when I have too many commas in the sentence. And then Addie also was reading for like potential incidences of bias or like how to make sure, you know, everything was fair and legal and like cold enough in places. Like just doing a double gut check. Yeah. And that's like kind of part of our whole thing at range is that we are part of the community and we have a sticker that we sell. And it's, it says, Community is my bias. And that's not like our official tagline or anything. Our official tagline is press for the people. It, or that's our official unofficial one. I don't know. I think it's on our website. I think it can be official. But community is our bias. And then that is not just like a cute little catchphrase. It's saying We're not going to pretend that something that is bad for our community is neutral. And we're not going to pretend that something good for our community is neutral. I think, it's oh, the grocery store down the street burned down. We don't have to go talk to people who might think that it's a really good thing that the grocery store burned down. Or, which isn't a really extreme example. But I think sometimes, Well, I think the most extreme example is I had a journalism professor, a very long time ago say something that has always stuck with me that you're not going to say that rape is good. As a journalist, like that's not, You're not going to go find somebody to interview who thinks that actually this is good, really. Yeah. And that and that attitude of both sides ism and like the theory of objectivity in journalism comes from The point of view of cisgender white men and and so like the view from nowhere. Yeah, it's like My point of view is so unbiased and so distant that anything I write will be like objective and oh If you're trans you can't write stories about trans people because you're gonna be biased and it's Are you somebody who owns stocks? Because if you're somebody who owns stocks, are you ever allowed to write about the financial market? Or, if you're, like, a straight white guy, are you ever allowed to write about other straight white men? Or the issues that face them? Can you write about any heterosexual people? Yeah, and it's the standard that I feel like really gets unjustly enforced against women, people of color, queer people. Yeah. That, oh, you're unobjective, you're biased, you can't tell this story. And I think that's, you know, that's what we've always tried to push back against. And also, we want to check anything that reads like real bias. Right. And and, you know, in our editorial values, it's we still, we always give people the chance to comment. You reached out to Planned Parenthood multiple times, and I also reached out to the labor consulting company, and they were just like, we don't have anybody here that can talk to the media right now, and probably never. Have a blessed day. Did they say blessed day? They did say have a blessed day. Oh, fun. I included that in the story just because it was so like, I don't know, polite. Short and polite. Right. Okay. Yeah. And you know, so we're always fair. There's a difference between being fair and being quote unquote unbiased and being fair is giving everybody a chance to comment. We're always accurate. We fact check everything. Never going to misrepresent a quote I get. Again, I think that's how we've built trust with some of the conservatives is that I am never going to try to spin what you say in any kind of way. I will print what you say later. I will print what the progressive say. There might be like. Who else I choose to interview has to do with the content of the story and, you know, the other folks I interview or give space to it might end up having more We don't try to be balanced, I guess. We try to be fair and accurate. And we try to give our community the information. That they need and not gaslight them about, you know, Oh, well, one person says this and another person says this, so really, who knows? It's all neutral and up in the air. What color is the sky? Well, I think it's red, and if I said that, I wouldn't be quoted in one of our articles. We're almost out of time. I'm trying to think of how to fill the next four minutes. So One thing that I have a question on is We mentioned some of the people involved Sarah Dixit you mentioned Lillian Alvarede. But there is another big figure in this story, Paul Dillon, who is a Spokane City Council member and he used to be the director of public affairs? Oh, VP. Got it. So what was his role in all of this? Yeah, Paul's got an interesting story here because his team was sort of, you know, decimated like both while and as he was leaving, but this all happens like right around the time when A, Paul's family's having a baby and B, Paul is running for office. So he goes on parental leave to be with his family. And then he also he told me that at first leadership didn't have an issue with him running for office. While working there was like talks about maybe what your hours are gonna be since you know City Council is a pretty demanding job But they'd never expressed that he says that they had not expressed that it was a huge issue Then he goes on parental leave and when he comes back, they're like, oh actually like You should, you know, step back. So that you can focus on your campaign. It was sort of like interesting. He characterized it as a demotion and he was no longer the vp. What that did though is that meant that he was no longer in leadership. So if you're familiar with the structure of unions basically management or like people who have authority over other employees. Can't be in a union. They have like niche unions that are like, Oh, it's only the janitorial staff or it's only the nurses. The union that Planned Parenthood is looking at would span all employees who are not managers. As soon as Paul got demoted to not a manager, he started trying to help the workplace unionize because he was no longer handcuffed by that leadership role. So on his way out the door, after he got Demoted, he took the city council job and then he, or he won his city council election and then he ended up getting a job at Pro Choice Washington where Sarah Dixit also works doing essentially the same thing and they didn't really have a problem with him also holding a position on council. And on his way out the door, he connected the staff with a union organizer and that is That's how this story really all began. Interesting. Okay. Alright. That is our time for this week, Erin. You want to play us out? Do you have questions about local government? Wondering who to complain to about an issue in your neighborhood? Wondering which agency governs certain things? Or why something is happening, or how much it costs? Email us at freerange at kyrs. org with your questions, and we'll try and answer them next week. If you had questions about anything we talked about today, we will also link to our stories and anything we talked about on our KYRS page. Free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio, KYRS Medical Lake slash Spokane. All right, catch you next week. Bye. No, wait, are we? It'll be a recorded episode next week. We are on vacation. Okay, goodbye.