Southern Poverty Law Center faces protest from staffers over racial disparity in telework policies

The union representing workers for the Southern Poverty Law Center protested outside the organization's headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, saying there are racial disparities in the organization’s plans to return to the office in the wake of COVID-19 restrictions, the Montgomery Adviser reports.

According to the union, a unit responsible for bringing in revenue that's primarily made up of Black women was being required to return to work, despite work-from-home options being available for other employees.

"I've been here for over 20 years and this team has always been excluded from anything as progressive," said Lisa Wright, the corporate gifts coordinator for SPLC and an organizer and steward of the SPLC Union.

The SPLC has a history of activism that includes suing a Ku Klux Klan group into bankruptcy in the 1980s, as well as advocacy for workers, immigrants, and LGBT rights.

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In a statement this Monday, SPLC president and CEO Margaret Huang said the organization "has created a new hybrid-flexible work model that provides employees who are in eligible roles with an opportunity to work 100 percent remotely."

"We have nearly 400 employees and have identified only 9% of employees whose positions require them to be in the office, performing activities such as processing legal mail and donor contributions," the statement read.

But according to Wright, the work she does "looks a little different, but it's not."

"The tasks are still critical to the organization and we should all be able to be treated exactly the same," Wright said.

This is not the first time the SPLC has had controversies over race, particularly when it comes to minorities and leadership opportunities, one example being the 2019 resignation of an assistant legal director over alleged racial and gender discrimination that led to the ouster of SPLC co-founder Morris Dees and several executives.