Land Trust nonprofit prepares for its first contract negotiations after its management agrees to union request

It might seem unusual to those unfamiliar with unions that City of Bridges Community Land Trust employees will be represented in their first contract negotiations by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 57.

It isn’t to Claire Cawley, director of organizing for IUPAT DC57, who says the employees there and her union have values that align. And it isn’t for her international union either, or the AFL-CIO international contacts who connected her to the nonprofit’s staff when they sought representation. Unions now work with people in many private and public companies and organizations beyond the employees they have traditionally represented. That trend has been growing for years, including in Western Pennsylvania with the Service Employees International Union Local 668 and United Steelworkers union, just to name two.

Last month CBCLT employees announced that the 5-year-old nonprofit’s board of directors voted unanimously to recognize voluntarily the formation of the CBCLT staff union, according to a news release. It will be the first nonprofit to unionize with IUPAT DC57, which is based in Carnegie.

The second City of Bridges Community Land Trust executive director, Rebecca Aguilar-Francis, emphasized those shared values in the announcement: “Unionization strengthens the foundation of an organization by ensuring equity, accountability and transparency — values that already resonate within City of Bridges Community Land Trust’s work across Allegheny County. I commend CBCLT staff and board for leading by example and affirming their commitment to economic justice both within and beyond their walls. Voluntary recognition of the CBCLT staff’s union efforts reflects our profound respect for the voices of these employees and acknowledgement of their vital role in advancing our mission.”

According to its website, CBCLT is an independent nonprofit that develops permanently affordable housing assets to strengthen communities and improve the quality of their buildings and housing. It grew out of the Lawrenceville Corp.’s CLT program, the first community land trust in Western Pennsylvania, and works to provide permanently affordable housing opportunities in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Its mission is to build community ownership that preserves permanent affordability, empowers individuals and ensures responsible growth and stewardship. Its website currently lists homes for sale in Hazelwood, Garfield, Troy Hill, Fineview, Lawrenceville and Perry Hilltop.

CBCLT’s six-member staff sought union representation when original Executive Director Ed Nusser left this past spring to join Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato’s staff as director of housing strategy.

Casandra Armour, its communications and marketing manager, said Nusser’s departure proved to be a pivotal moment and a time to address reality. She said they realized, “We’re at the mercy of who this next person is. All the support we had grown accustomed to — wages, benefits, things like that — was going to be subject to how this next person chose to lead. We believe everyone deserves stability, health and safety. It became important to us that fair wages and fair benefits should come from good work and not goodwill.”

She said the staff has been very fortunate in that their positions were never in jeopardy. The board involved the employees in the hiring of a new executive director, including them in the final interview. “We’re very fortunate to have such a good board. [Unionization] wasn’t a response to poor treatment. It will help us for the next time, and we won’t have to worry about who will be the next executive director.”

Aguilar-Francis started her tenure last month, and Armour said, “She is great, and we hope to work with her a long time.” 

Staff and management will start bargaining next month, Armour said, a quick process considering the outreach to IUPAT DC57 started just this fall.

This isn’t the first union its Housing Operations Manager Anna Kochersperger has belonged to, as prior to coming to Pittsburgh, she worked in Los Angeles’ film industry and joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees or IATSE. When she transitioned to living here, Kochersperger worked at the East End Food Co-op.

She knows the importance of getting everything workers have enjoyed — wages and benefits as well as work policies — into a contract. “Nonprofits can get into a cycle of revolving doors with executive directors,” she said. What can happen is that no one in the organization might pay attention to the need for cost-of-living increases and working conditions that has kept the staff happy and in place. But she notes, “Nothing is bad here.  And we want to be sure it doesn’t go bad.”

Kochersperger said at one point there was a brief moment of trepidation. The staff didn’t know how to move forward, and the board had questions.

“It took a little bit of not talking through the lawyers,” she said. “We had to come to the table together, and everyone had to give a little bit of their true self and trust. It wasn’t a gamesmanship situation.  …  Everyone had the right intentions. The board needed to know what we wanted to get from that relationship. We just had to tip our hands enough so everyone felt comfortable coming to the table.”

Kochersperger considers a contract a road map, and although the nonprofit’s board is agreeable and believes in the CBCLT’s mission, work needs to be done to connect the work to the values, especially as it grows and expands.

Employees also recognize the nonprofit’s current situation. “We are the staff. We do the work. We are in the budgets every day,” she said. “We know the limitations of the [available] capital and the resources we have available.” 

For Kochersperger the major plus is that the contract talks will begin soon, and it will be a collaborative situation, something she called “a cool place of discovery.” That includes its board learning more about the organization’s day-to-day operations.

Cawley said an AFL-CIO international contact reached out to her this fall after CBCLT staff requested help with starting a union. She noted that her union has been around since the 19^th century and is happy to represent any workers who want protection.

“I connected with the employees, and we discovered that our organizations’ values are very well-aligned,” she wrote in an email.

On its website, Cawley noted that CBCLT envisions diverse communities where people thrive and build wealth. “This is precisely what the members of our union strive to achieve every day. We fight for family sustaining wages with benefits that lead to a secure retirement. The main goal for the members of our union is to have dignity in the workplace so that we can all provide for and enjoy life with our families and loved ones, which ultimately uplifts the communities we work and live in.”

That extends to its management and board, Cawley continued. “It has been a collaborative and pleasant experience because CBCLT lives by the values they uphold,” she wrote. “The employees and management have fostered an environment of mutual respect, so it is not surprising that management is in support of the employees codifying their working conditions in a contract.”

Cawley joined IUPAT DC57 as a commercial painter in 2018. She had the opportunity to come in from the field and help support the union’s work during the 2020 presidential election. She became an organizer full time in 2021 and started as its organizing director in September 2023.

Her union covers 32 counties from Centre to the Ohio line and from Erie down to Greene and Washington. Eight locals comprise the district, with more than 2,500 members, according to its website and the CBCLT news release. It has locals with 10 and fewer members and some with 600, so the small size of its newest group is not unusual for it.

Across the country IUPAT’s districts and locals in California and the District of Columbia have represented nonprofit organizations, and the union also represents teachers aides, librarians, custodians in school settings. Cawley said her district is always looking to grow and build more worker power in Western Pennsylvania.

For now, she and others have been preparing for negotiations, which will start next month, by sharing information with the CBCLT management, including work policies and handbooks. The union representatives will review it all with workers to begin.

“We’d love to have a contract as soon as possible,” she said. “We’d like it to be a few months. [But] it’s hard to say. Until we’re in that room, we don’t know where both sides are coming from. From the short experience with City of Bridges so far, it has been really collaborative.”

Cawley was not aware of the organization before the representation request, but from what she has learned so far, she is impressed, she said. “They have built an environment of respect.  Optimistically it will just be a few months of negotiating, but it could take a year.”