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EP 7: Special Report on Creating Safer and More Supportive Workplaces in the Age of COVID-19 with Linda Seabrook of Futures Without Violence

Transcript

Participants:

Michael Young

Linda Seabrook, General Counsel, Futures Without Violence

Michael Young:

Welcome to the Purpose, Inc., the podcast where we discuss corporate purpose and stakeholder capitalism. I'm your host, Michael Young.

I generally try to keep these opening monologues to just a couple of minutes but this one is going to go on for a bit. So, strap in, buckle up. I started this podcast in January. It was the week that Davos wrapped up and now it's early May and we're seven or eight weeks into the COVID pandemic. And the pronouncements at Davos about a more compassionate form of capitalism seemed like a lifetime ago. And as I've interviewed guests on the podcast, I've definitely asked every one of them about the impact that COVID is having on the notion of stakeholder capitalism and the question I've had is would corporations throw these principles out the window in service to shareholder interests. And I've definitely talked about the intersection between capital and labor on this podcast a lot and I just interviewed Alison Omens, the chief strategy officer at Just Capital about some data and polling they're doing that shows that companies that are doing right by workers are being rewarded by customer loyalty and investor confidence.

So, these principles have not been largely thrown out the window. That's the good news. But it's not consistent, right? And I'm not going to go into a whole thing about whether it's working or it isn't so listen to my conversation with Alison about why those findings are significant. But I will say that if anything, the pandemic has really held up an ugly reflection to us about how we treat workers in the United States and I am speaking from a U.S. perspective at the moment. Everyone is finally seeing the calculus that low-wage workers must confront on a daily basis between personal health and safety and a paycheck and here I'm talking about restaurant workers, agricultural workers, hospitality, gig workers, meat packers, delivery people and what we're suddenly calling essential workers and whether we thought them essential before is an open question. I'm not going to pass judgment on that right here right now.

But the COVID workplace is also showing a deeper paradox. Which is imagine that a workplace that is maybe unsafe now due to COVID, but that same workspace before COVID was previously the only safe space a person experiencing intimate partner violence was able to go to. So, imagine you're in an abusive relationship at home and work was the only shelter and respite you had and now you're laid off or locked down with that abuser, that your movement has been restricted due to lockdown requirements, shelter in place and things like that. And the economic downturn and there I've been reading articles about the social ills that are that are really ramping up. Calls to domestic violence hotlines are surging, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, those kinds of things. A long way of getting around to my guest today who is really incredibly knowledgeable on this topic, Linda Seabrook is the general council and director of workplace safety and equity at Futures Without Violence.

Futures Without Violence is a national social justice and anti-violence organization that for over 30 years has been providing groundbreaking programs, policies and campaigns to change the social norms and empower individuals and organizations working to end violence against women and children and help communities heal and thrive. Linda holds a bachelor's from the University of Virginia and a JD from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Linda and I had an in-depth conversation about the work she and her organization does in designing state-of-the-art training and best practices aimed at improving workplace culture and organizational responses to gender-based violence, sexual harassment, discrimination to promote safety, diversity, equity and improved employment opportunities and outcomes for vulnerable workers who are experiencing violence, harassment and discrimination.

This episode could have easily gone for two hours. In fact, after I stopped recording, Linda and I went on to have just an incredible off the record conversation which I want to have on the record but about systemic gender inequalities built into workplace and public policy and how that places additional and outsized burdens on working women. And we talk about issues of paid leave, of scheduling and flexibility, childcare and how these are barriers to advancement in the workplace, how the lack of real parity keeps women at the bottom more vulnerable back to workplace violence and workplace harassment. We got on a topic of emotional labor which has always been something I've been interested in and is that a form of capitalist alienation and again, we're not going to talk about that here today. But I need to have Linda back on the podcast to really start to unpack these critically important issues and to expand and extend the discussion we had today about workplace safety.

So, without further ado, my interview with Linda Seabrook of Futures Without Violence.

Linda, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Linda Seabrook:

Thank you so much, Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Michael Young:

I mean let's just start with current events, shall we?

Linda Seabrook:

Is something going on?

Michael Young:

Yeah, yeah. A little bit. We're kind of seeing this perfect storm with COVID around worker safety and well-being but I think you come at this from a much broader perspective and that's really what I want to get into with you today on the podcast. As you look at this crisis, how are you seeing this from a worker workplace standpoint and perspective?

Linda Seabrook:

I think often when there is any type of crisis, we try and look for those like silver linings. And then kind of thinking that through, like what is the silver lining for workers? What is the silver lining for the workplace that can come out of this real wide-scale destruction honestly of our economy and the workforce and many industries? I think that what the public and employers are realizing is that we bring our whole selves to work and we do so with whatever family obligations and experiences of violence that we may be experiencing. Reports of domestic violence are surging during the pandemic worldwide so much so that the UN Secretary General urged governments to include funding support and policies for survivors of domestic violence and child abuse within their COVID-19 response and plans and legislation.

Domestic violence at its root is about power and control. So, what's interesting about the pandemic and the shelter at home orders is now abusers can actually use government sanctioned orders to restrict movement and access to the outside and survivors now have no means of escape. So, with the financial stress and the uncertain future that is happening now, it exacerbates feelings of being out of control and that's a position that abusers don't like to be in or feel. So, they may feel that their power to now exert their power and control on those who are trapped sheltering in place with the abuser. We've heard from the DV hotline of increased calls from supervisors and co-workers seeing signs of abuse on video calls for workers that are teleworking and that's brought about I really believe a realization for some employers because we're hearing from them that the workplace can actually be a safe place for those experiencing interpersonal violence and an opportunity for intervention and that's what we try to do at Workplaces Respond which is the national resource center that Futures Without Violence leads. We work with employers and employees, unions and other workplace stakeholders to build what we call resilient workplace communities that provide support for those experiencing violence, intervention for those perpetrating violence and prevention against domestic violence, sexual violence and harassment and stalking impacting workers in the workplace.

And I'll say secondly too that I think everyone is finally seeing the calculus that too many low-wage working women often have to confront and by that, I mean the calculation between safety and a paycheck and we're seeing it now with essential workers having to go to work perhaps even if sick or exposed and the failure of employers to provide even minimal workplace protections and supports to them. So, that's the same calculus that agricultural workers and janitors and hotel housekeepers often face every day. They face significant exposure to workplace sexual violence, sexual harassment and they don't have the means or the social capital to complain or report. So, it comes down to like do I go out into the fields and get violated by my supervisor as he's threatened me or do I feed my family? And I think there's now a greater recognition of that calculus writ large and who is essential to a business, to our families, to our health, to our food supply, to the economy and that includes these workers. So, I think to me the question now becomes going forward, where can we find our silver lining, how do we acknowledge that going forward?

Amazon and Walmart and Target are recording unimaginable profits during this pandemic while at the same time failing to provide the workers who allow them to record those record profits any paid leave, any access to testing and sanitized workspaces and appropriate PPE. To me, that cannot stand. We can't go into a post-pandemic world and have that be our new normal and our new reality. On May 1st actually, on International Workers Day, workers that many of those businesses are actually planning to strike because you can't really call a worker essential one day but then treat them as expendable the next. They have families, they have children, most of them didn't sign up to—they're not working in hospitals. They didn't sign up to work in a workplace that could potentially expose them to a deadly virus with no safety protocols in place especially because many of them are workers of color who are more prone to the devastating and tragic consequences of this virus. They have a right to be safe at work. We all have the right to be safe at work and I think the country seems to be finally getting at that now.

Michael Young:

Yeah. And I think we're seeing a real bifurcation in the market or on the landscape of those companies that are taking all of these issues seriously and those who maybe continue to sort of push it to the side. And you and I talked earlier about the Just Capital study and I just had Alison Omens on the podcast and we talked about this topic in particular. And there's a real correlation between how consumers see companies and how they're going to hold them accountable. So, how do you think about how companies will be held accountable moving forward out of this pandemic either by capital regulators or consumers or workers? And I'd love your thoughts, if you have them, on the topic of unions broadly. You mentioned May 1st and I think that has always been a union rallying point. Where are unions in all of this? So, I know that's a lot to unpack but I just would like you to continue on this discussion about how businesses need to really step in, step up and behave differently to protect what we're now calling essential workers but they've been workers all along that weren't that essential, were expendable and now we have this new term. How do you think this is going to play out?

Linda Seabrook:

Well, I think that's a great leverage point. I really do think that workers are seeing the power that they have because they know that they're the ones who kind of keep these machines running, all these different business machines. They are the cogs. They're in the wheel. They're moving things along. And I do think it has to be a partnership between workers and the public writ large. Anytime I see people on Facebook posts, friends of mine that are like oh, look at the great thing that they did for these healthcare workers. They were holding up signs, etc. etc. And I just want to say like that's wonderful. Yes, these people are heroes. Yes, we thank them for going to the front lines. But we can't forget them after the crisis is over. If you feel that they are essential now in the time where we most need them now, then that has to be accounted for in the future.

And with respect to unions, I think that there's this mix of how things have—things have always been a certain way. You have unions on one side, employers on the other and the unions are representing the employees even if they're not members of that particular union. I think we have to really think about it differently going forward. I do think that there's going to be a power shift and a reckoning in some industries too, for example, in the restaurant industry. I think there was some statistic, I think maybe Tom Colicchio said it, that 75% of restaurants, smaller restaurants will be just gone, wiped out at this pandemic and now there's this whole narrative of I'm sure the National Restaurant Association or some industry or organization that are planting these stories around the country about restaurant workers wanting to stay home and bake cookies and collect unemployment rather than go into restaurants and get restaurants running again. But the problem is if you are paying a restaurant server the sub minimum wage of $2.13 an hour and then your restaurant is at 20% capacity and there's no safety protocols, controls, PPE, any of that, why would a restaurant worker go back to that place of employment when their work wasn't valued from the first place? And they're going into an industry that has a flawed business model with very narrow profit margins and a shift of an employer's responsibility onto the consumer. The employer has the responsibility to pay their employees but with tipped workers that responsibility is really based on the whims of customers. So, there might be a reckoning for that particular industry and it might emerge better because it's not working now.

You have Walmart employees that are on public assistance that we're paying for their SNAP benefits that they have to be on because they are paid low wages. They're at minimum wage. That has to change. It's not sustainable because those people are so at the poverty line that we're seeing what's happening. That floor, that very thin floor has completely caved in and those people are being left at the bottom. And I think if workers can maybe come together and come in and align themselves with consumers to demand the just basic workplace protection supports and rights, I think it makes for a healthier economy overall because we can't continue to keep bailing out the least of us. We have to create a stable floor for working people in this country.

Michael Young:

Yeah, yeah. And that's really what that Just Capital study illuminates is consumers are going to continue to vote with their wallets with the companies that they see doing the right thing, that they're not going to get a pass and that a reckoning is coming. And the flip side of that is those who are doing the right thing are being rewarded in the current downturn. So, I think there's a lot of very powerful data there. We came right out talking about domestic violence and I want to come back to that because I think for a long time work and personal life has always sort of collapsed in the United States. I think other countries have much greater separation between work life and personal life. And I've heard you say we've conflated the workplace with community, that work is the modern American neighborhood. So, how's the neighborhood doing and how do employers who may be seeing it work their employees in greater levels of distress? How do they supervise with empathy and how do they take action appropriately? Could you unpack that for us?

Linda Seabrook:

So, actually what I often say, I hate the term like work-life balance because I think it sets us up for failure. Like we're somehow supposed to have this perfect balance of quote unquote play time and quote unquote work time. But what it really is is just life and we bring our whole selves to work all the time. So, that's really what we try to impress upon employers is that keeping those things separate. And especially now in the pandemic, we're seeing that work life and home life are very intertwined. So, keeping those things like artificially separate really doesn’t that make sense. You talked about supervising with empathy and that's definitely what we call it. The more pedagogical term is like trauma-informed supervision but nobody wants to like be a therapist in the workplace and that's not really what we're trying to encourage. But what we are trying to encourage is a management, a supervisor, an employer supporting a worker’s resilience by prioritizing safety, support and access to support as well as trust.

So, we try to offer strategies that employers can use to make that realization of it's just life come to life. Not many supervisors receive training on how to manage employees. I think that some mistakenly believe in managing employees, you should prioritize the employer’s needs and meet those markers. But doing that often causes employees to become disengaged and marginalized. So, with just a small pivot to centering on the needs of workers, you actually realize the employer’s needs much more quickly. Employees who feel supported and they feel like they're a part of something of their work, of the company's mission, whatever that might be, they're just much happier and they thrive. And there have been studies around that. We, in fact, also created a webpage through the workplace resource center that I hope that you'll share with your listening audience that provides some tips and strategies and suggestions for supporting workers who may be experiencing violence in the pandemic and identifying possible signs that your employees may need support.

And you were talking about the workplace being a neighborhood. I mean we say that all the time here and I love that. In a neighborhood, you have responsibilities to each other. If I don't cut my lawn, that makes your house maybe not look as great too. And what responsibilities do employers have as the mayor of the neighborhood? Leadership is really key here. What we do is we’re helping businesses develop a workplace code of conduct or develop training for their workplace for responding to or preventing sexual harassment. We don't come in there as oh, we’re Futures Without Violence and we know what we're talking about. We're the experts on this. What we do is the employees are the experts. Leadership needs to demonstrate that they want to create that supportive workplace culture and then all levels of employees should be engaged in co-creating their values, their code of conduct and then connecting those values to their mission or product. So, if you go back to like the neighborhood context, that would be like the HOA rules. Those are often created with or altered through stakeholder input which are the homeowners. So, why should it be different in the workplace? I think we have to think beyond just this is how things have been done and having HR practices a very—I always say human resources is not a resource for humans. It's a resource for the company. But it doesn't have to be and I think you have a more successful company when you can shift that thinking.

Michael Young:

And I want to jump to how you talk about encouraging corporations to get beyond metrics and move to real cultural change and supporting and protecting workers and staff. Can you talk about how you do that and what are some of the ways in which companies can increase the level of change?

Linda Seabrook:

Yeah, absolutely. What has been kind of an exciting development recently has been that some corporations especially in the tech world are moving from that old framework of the diversity and inclusion officer to a human capital vice president or chief people officer. And I really think that's the right move because often DNI is way too focused on metrics and it makes no difference to me if you have a woman or a person of color in a c-suite position if that position still relies on that same institutional and cultural framework that perpetuates inequity. What I've seen happening in some companies is that chief people officers are focusing more on employees as the most critical stakeholder of the business and they're finding a way to ascertain employee needs and include employee input in developing policies, in valuing the diversity of viewpoints and experiences. Because we find that that kind of creates the right trajectory for a collective kind of consciousness if you will in the workplace and the values that that workplace espouses.

Michael Young:

Yeah. That's a huge point and I think that ensuring that the espoused values and the values in practice line up. And I think what we're seeing is when those two things diverge, you can't put it back together on a website or a press release.

Linda Seabrook:

That's exactly right.

Michael Young:

In a media interview, in a commercial.

Linda Seabrook:

Right.

Michael Young:

At that point, you're toast.

Linda Seabrook:

Totally. And it's the difference between like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods quite frankly. I don't want to necessarily put any particular company on blast. But if a company were to say that their company believes in certain values especially with respect to the food chain, etc., etc., but you still are not providing paid leave and other critical workplace supports to your employees, there's a chasm there. There's a real difference there where you look at a company like Trader Joe's which really places high value of their workforce. They believe that their workforce is essential and I think that has been a great example of customer demand and expectations and company values. So, how do we get everybody right there? That's the secret sauce.

Michael Young:

Yeah. And you talk about listening and the role that listening plays in the process especially as it relates to the elimination of real vulnerabilities and threats in the workplace. Talk about that.

Linda Seabrook:

Again, it goes back to listening to workers. Workers know how, when, why, by whom, any abusive conduct in the workplace occurs, discriminatory conduct, etc. So, because of that, they have to be central to the development of policies, practices and procedures that are designed to protect them. What we usually advise is for workplaces to establish, you can call it whatever you want but sometimes we've used a workplace values team and that team is comprised of representatives of all levels of jobs and responsibilities and reflective of a diversity of viewpoints of worker and community demographics. And then this team can decide what next steps need to be taken. Is there a common understanding of the cultural issues underlying the workplace environment? That's a good question for that team to ask itself and if they don't know that answer, anonymous workplace climate surveys are a very useful tool to ascertain employee perceptions of that environment, the efficacy as well as the failures of any policies in place and those odd underlying cultural values of the organization. And if there is that difference between what we say and what we do, then a good second step from there is to like analyze the responses from that survey and then use them to think about okay, how do we fix together what has been identified as a problem. Do they need another process for reporting discrimination and harassment? What would that look like then if they centered affected workers in those responses that are created?

Those teams can also serve as like both peer support and advocates for workers because workers honestly don't have that even in unionized workplaces because the union is an outside entity. It can also be a good sounding board for management because I think the basic premise is that if you talk at employees with the policy or procedure that was created from on high or the legal department, that may drive compliance but it will be temporary. In order to achieve true cultural change, you have to create, what I said earlier, that shared understanding of values and workers need to know that they have a stake in creating and enforcing those values for the benefit of everyone.

Michael Young:

Yeah. And leadership is the key, as you said.

Linda Seabrook:

That's right. And workers have to have that stake in building that cultural framework in order to share a collective responsibility for outcomes.

Michael Young:

We, unfortunately, Linda, are going to have to leave it there. But this has been a hugely important discussion and I'm very grateful to you for taking the time to talk to us about that.

Linda Seabrook:

I'm so very grateful to have been here and spent this time with you. These are really important issues and I think we're at a really critical inflection point right now and a real opportunity for change and making employees the important stakeholders that they should.

Michael Young:

Absolutely. Thanks again, Linda.

Linda Seabrook:

Thank you.

Michael Young:

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