Thread by @DailyKosGuild

Yesterday, members of our Guild unit suddenly lost access to email, Slack, HubSpot, and other vital tools used to do their jobs. Others received deposit notifications for final PTO disbursements. Some saw their @dailykos Staff accounts converted to Community accounts.

We’ve come to the table ready to bargain at every step. We're actively attempting to help @dailykos right itself by collaborating on ways to reduce our people costs. But our negotiations have been complicated by unclear parameters and shifting goalposts.

A cease and desist was issued to @dailykos in response to a change in terms revealed 48 hours before our negotiations deadline, and for underreporting the Guild’s cost-savings achieved through voluntary buyouts. Read about that dispute here: bit.ly/supportDKG

Yesterday evening, some of our members who had apparently been laid off received an email from the president of @dailykos, Will Rockafellow. It explained that our payroll system issued "premature” vacation deposits.

No one has yet explained the lockouts or the account restorations that followed. For more than 24 hours, members of our Guild have had to ask if they’re still employed. Some still don't have access to job-critical tools—and some have decided they’d like to leave @dailykos.

All of this while we scramble to adjust our calculations to a financial goal that changed midway through our final week of bargaining to save our own jobs and avoid #layoffs at @dailykos.

People ask if we care about @dailykos. We’re doing two jobs each right now: We’re model employees at work, and full-time self-advocates afterward. All of that labor is in service to making ourselves *more affordable* so we can stay at DK.

The Guild has said from Day 1 of these negotiations that our goal is to minimize harm—to our members, to @dailykos operations. Premature involuntary #layoffs, even if immediately retracted, hurt both.

Apologizing for an accidental payroll mishap doesn't erase the harm of the actions taken afterward, which remain unexplained: Loss of access to job-critical tools, services, and systems, and Staff accounts converted to Community. None of these are controlled by payroll.

Our @PacMediaGuild rep has sent a detailed info request to @dailykos regarding this weekend’s mysterious payroll and job-tools activity. When we have a response, and a fuller view of what led to this, we’ll decide how to proceed.

For now, we're waiting to hear back on our final #layoff aversion proposal. We hope some of our reasonable, actionable plans will appeal to @dailykos so we can move through this process and begin bargaining on our first contract (CBA).