Support Bird Union Members on Strike

My name is Hannah Waters and I’m a former member of the Bird Union-CWA Local 1180 and a former journalist at the National Audubon Society.

I started this GoFundMe to raise funds for my friends and former colleagues at Audubon, a century-old national environmental nonprofit that protects birds, people, and the places they share. An overwhelming majority of the Bird Union, the organization’s staff union, voted to authorize an Unfair Labor Practice strike due to Audubon’s unlawful actions toward union members.

In contract negotiations that Audubon has dragged out for more than two years, the organization has broken federal labor laws in multiple instances. It denied members benefits given to non-represented staff—as a result, members receive a mere two weeks of paid parental leave while non-union employees receive six, and part-time employees get zero sick days, among other inequities. The organization also made unilateral changes to healthcare and refuses to bargain over minimum salaries.

The more than 250 members of the Bird Union are a passionate group of conservationists, scientists, educators, advocates, communicators, journalists, financial experts, land stewards, lobbyists, and volunteer coordinators who want to protect birds and the environment and receive basic worker protections.

Members will go on a three-day strike starting September 10, 2024. These hundreds of workers will not be paid while they’re on the picket line. That’s where you come in. To offset the hardship members face from losing these wages, workers will be able to request funds from this page through a team of union stewards, who will manage this money and ensure it goes directly to members. Any extra money left over after paying out those who request funds will be donated to a charity or strike fund of the Bird Union’s choice. Should the Bird Union not have to strike before ratifying a contract, donations will be refunded.

Thank you for protecting the people who protect the birds!

*Funds from the Bird Union strike fund are collected independently from the Communications Workers of America