OnPoint United workers continue to battle for a labor contract at OnPoint NYC, the first legally operating Overdose Prevention Site in the United States.
But the organization is doing everything it can to delay and halt organizing and negotiating efforts.
It’s been over a year since we won recognition and began negotiations at OnPoint NYC, an uphill battle to ratify a union contract. The compassion and love required to do the vital work we provide often comes at a personal cost to us as employees, yet our organization’s leadership refuses to extend that same love to us. As the first organization of its kind, there are no existing structures to support us, often leaving us burnt out and without proper protections for our well-being and mental health. Yet despite winning recognition over a year ago, our employer continues to union bust at every turn. We say: enough is enough.
OnPoint NYC is a community-based harm reduction organization formed from a merger between New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE) and Washington Heights Corner Project (WHCP). We operate out of two locations: one in East Harlem and another in Washington Heights. In addition to the overdose prevention center, we offer safer syringe access, case management, clinic assistance, holistic support, mental health services, and respite and food programs.
When we first decided to unionize, upper management assured us they would bargain in good faith. Now despite upper management’s assurances that they to want to provide fairer and safer working conditions, their union-busting tactics prove they do not. For example, when we first requested a card check agreement in August 2023, OnPoint delayed it and instead offered a “wage lift” to our drop-in center workers. As the largest department within the organization, this was seen as a deliberate move to hurt our union efforts before we even achieved recognition.
After promising wage increases, management then began telling us that these could not be fulfilled “because of the union,” while simultaneously offering promotions to some workers to strategically remove the most vocally pro-union of them from the “bargaining unit” — the group of employees protected under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Eventually, despite these tactics, our organizational leadership finally recognized our union in December 2023.
Management has also worked to undermine our union efforts through illegal firings. When one of our coworkers was found to have been illegally fired, UNITE HERE filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), resulting in a settlement win for the worker. UNITE HERE has also filed charges against OnPoint for surface bargaining, illegally firing an employee due to union involvement, bad faith bargaining, and failing to sign agreements over the year-long negotiation process. Unfortunately, these case filings have not led to the substantial changes we need, leaving some of us disillusioned with the institutional efforts under labor law. While the NLRB is supposed to protect workers, these cases often linger unresolved, and in the meantime, we continue to lose jobs and work in unsafe conditions without meaningful change.
Although our organization prides itself on giving a voice to the community and meeting individuals where they are, OnPoint’s upper management has done everything it can to silence us and avoid negotiating a fair contract. They’ve employed a range of petty tactics, from refusing to meet for negotiations for months to singling out and firing members of our negotiating committee. They’ve even taken down union fliers, even when they were placed in mutually agreed-upon areas.
The executive assistant has attempted to circumvent union bargaining by asking staff to meet with our executive director Sam Rivera directly, despite his frequent absence from work. In these conversations, the assistant also told us that staff would be laid off after the union contract expires, further attempting to deceive and intimidate us. Rivera has often spoken proudly about the union nursing position his mother held while raising him. Yet, he seems far too willing to maintain his positive community image while outsourcing union-busting and contract-stalling to managers and lawyers, denying us the same labor standards and protections he praises his mother for having and which he admits made his life what it was.
Many of us at OnPoint come from the same marginalized communities we serve, and some of us are even former participants in the program. Despite this, the principles of harm reduction that are so crucial for improving health outcomes for participants and fostering community collaboration are not extended to us as staff. We often feel unsupported and unheard by our supervisors and upper management, who take advantage of our fierce loyalty to the people and community we serve. The same agency afforded to participants in their drug use, health, and benefits decisions is denied to us when it comes to finding ways to better provide services or create a healthier and safer working environment. OnPoint’s short-term and meager attempts to placate us lack any long-term plans to keep salaries and benefits competitive in the industry or proportional to the growth OnPoint enjoys — growth that is built upon our labor and our compassion for the community.
We deserve fairer representation and better working conditions, and we remain committed to efforts to achieve these changes. Over the past year, we’ve taken several steps to rally union solidarity and bring management to the table. We’ve coordinated union sticker days, distributed fliers, and met with Senator Gustavo Rivera, the sponsor of the Safer Consumption Act (which would allow New York state to fund overdose prevention sites). Senator Rivera is a former employee of the Service Employees International Union and a frequent guest at OnPoint NYC. We’ve also filed several NLRB charges, including two for employees unlawfully fired for union participation (not including a third charge that ended in a paid settlement), bad faith bargaining, and failure to sign agreements. Unfortunately, the effects of these efforts have been lackluster at best and management still has refused to move. We are tired of waiting for a union, what we want is far from unreasonable.
We want a Health and Safety Committee, where we can regularly meet with management to discuss safety concerns and collaborate on improving workplace safety. Given the dangerous nature of our work — handling used syringes, daily interactions with community members who can sometimes be hostile or violent, and our risk of communicable diseases exemplified by COVID as front-facing essential workers.
We want better job security and an end to OnPoint’s at-will employment policy, especially since management has demonstrated a willingness to weaponize this policy by illegally firing employees for protected union activities.
We want actual vacation days not “closure days” which means they are our days not left to management’s capricious whims, to give and take away at their discretion.
We want our wages to reflect the fruits of our labor and our contributions to OnPoint’s expansion and growth. For too long, many of us who have been part of the organization for years or even decades have seen no wage increases.
At this point, after over a year of negotiations, it’s clear that management does not respect us as workers or our desire for a fair labor contract. It seems the only way to bring management to the table in good faith is escalating, even through a labor strike if necessary. Due to the needs of our community and the life-saving services we provide, we have been hesitant to escalate to this level, but management is leaving us with no choice. For the sake of our community, our participants, and ourselves, we hope they make the right decision soon.