The Labor Dispute within the Anti Police Terror Project

Oakland’s Anti Police Terror Project (APTP) has recently become embroiled in an ongoing labor dispute between management and its fledgling staff union. On December 11th, 2024, the APTP Workers Union, representing a majority of eligible employees, requested that their union be recognized by APTP’s Executive Director, Cat Brooks, with the SF Bay Area Chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World acting as their bargaining agent.


The workers had hoped that by asking management to recognize their union it could avoid a formal petition to the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. So, what does that mean?


When a group of workers try to organize themselves into a union, they have a legal right to send that demand to the NLRB wherein it will begin a lengthy process of organizing an election to determine that the union represents a majority of the workers, winning the legal right to collectively negotiate a labor contract with the employer. This process is necessary in the first place because, more often than not, bosses refuse to recognize worker unions that are fighting for their livelihoods. The NLRB is a compromise created by generations of labor activists who established a process that bosses cannot legally ignore.

It’s a lengthy and costly process, one which the APTP Workers Union hoped to avoid by simply asking management of APTP to recognize their Union; they hoped that the “radical Black leadership” would simply not stand in their way.


The response was exactly the opposite. APTP leadership ignored their request for over a month, and then issued a statement demanding their union undergo a NLRB election. In this process, the Union has to prove a majority in a formal, monitored election before it can be legally recognized. The terms of this process is determined not by the workers but by the federal government.
This basically means that APTP leadership planned to leverage all of its considerable resources to defeat the union in this election and prevent it from winning legal recognition and the legal right to collectively bargain with their bosses.


The election was held on February 7th. It will take some time before the results are made official, but reports from the APTP staff union show that the union was ahead in the polls. However, this resolution has been delayed by 3 contested ballots.


From the outside, the most troubling news of these events is not the election itself but the words and actions of APTP management.


Workers have alleged that management has been trying to list supervisors and members of management as rank and file employees so that they can vote in the election (and likely against unionization). This is at the crux of the issue of the contested ballots(—):supervisors were allegedly listed as rank and file employees and voted in the election. The staff union also alleges workers have been denied disability accommodations during the election. This does not even touch on the statements made by APTP’s leader Cat Brooks who has mischaracterized the union drive as being exclusionary to Black staff:

“On December 11, 2024, APTP received a communication demanding voluntary recognition of a unionization effort. Around the same time, several Black APTP staff expressed concern that they had been excluded from any and all demand creation and decision-making processes associated with the unionization effort, and stated that the unionization effort did not represent them.”
Brooks oddly neglects to mention that some of the Black staff members left out are supervisors and members of management. Does Cat Brooks believe that the general public is so uneducated as to not know the most basic principle of union politics?

Cat Brooks and management have gone even further to claim this Union drive is a disruption to programs meant to support Black and oppressed people. This is a tired argument used by many non- profit directors who, in an age of neoliberalism, find themselves more and more responsible for social programs once run by the state and federal government and who, after working their staff half to death for a noble cause, use the suffering of the people as a shield to hide their exploitative practices.

This is clearly stated by another unnamed member of management in the same statement: “I want to be clear: I believe in unions and worker rights. I understand the value and importance of collective organizing for better working conditions. However, what we are experiencing here is something different—an effort that has diverted attention from our core mission and, in doing so, has caused significant disruption to the services we provide. My First Responders program, for example, has been devastated by this form of organizing, leaving me scrambling to maintain the support families rely on.”


This supervisor supports Unions and workers rights—until the workers try to flex their rights against them!To take this anti-union campaign one step further, Cat Brooks went on to gather the signatures of families whose members had been killed by police on a solidarity statement, opposing the union drive.

Regardless of where we stand on the nature of the election or the staff union. The latter practice is the most disgusting of all. This all deals with implication, the implication is that if you move against Cat Brooks, if you move against her financial interests, you oppose Black people in general and our martyrs in particular.

All of these actions taken together speak to the basic lack of political principle internal to APTP leadership. Their opposition campaign is not about community accountability, Black liberation or even the most basic tenets of progressive politics, but rather personal power and personal reputation.

To equate radical Black leadership with union busting should be considered a punishable offense. To invoke martyrs of the Black liberation struggle, in particular its struggle against police brutality, to protect one's own personal financial interest is an even lower blow. Doing research for this case and seeing such disgusting treatment of our fallen by its supposed leaders was almost unbearable. I am deeply curious as to what Cat Brooks told these families about the Union drive, and if they themselves were misled to join her.

Only time will tell. I wish the workers at the APTP workers Union the best of luck in their struggle. I also strongly encourage all of them to really look deep at the politics of this organization and ask: are all these actions such a surprise? In a later article, I will discuss the nature of the politics at play and how this debacle is just a symptom of the political mistakes and misdirections of the previous BLM grassroots movement and its own co-optation by these same non-profiteers. Stay tuned.

This story was written using all publicly available documents published by both parties. I was unable to make contact with either side in this dispute before publishing this piece but I am hoping to change that in later updates. I welcome any criticism or suggestions and commentary on this story.




Receipts:


APTP Workers Union statements:


https://www.instagram.com/p/DEnOIDjuEPX/? utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==


https://www.instagram.com/p/DE3JMLizql6/? utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==


https://www.instagram.com/p/DGPibPyR3Qw/? utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==


APTP Leadership response:


https://www.instagram.com/p/DE559H9yQzO/? utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==