Speaking Up Almost Cost Me My Job, but We Built Power Anyway

When I started work at a nonprofit for orphans in New York, I told myself to keep my head down, do good work, and be grateful to have a paycheck. I worked directly with the children, managing daily routines while trying to keep up with shifting expectations from management.

Common workplace problems were framed as personal failings, burnout meant poor time management, low morale meant a lack of resilience, and high turnover meant employees simply weren’t a fit. Over time, the same issues kept repeating: Staff were staying late to cover gaps without pay, and shifts changed with little notice, even when it disrupted care routines.

People were exhausted. People were scared. People were quietly leaving.

At first, staff conversations happened in hallways and group chats. Small, careful check-ins: “Is it just me?” “Are you feeling this too?” One colleague, whom we’ll refer to as Ken, worked a different shift from mine, but we kept running into the same problems: being asked to stay past our scheduled hours to cover understaffed shifts or being blamed when expectations around the children’s care changed without warning.

We discovered that we were all carrying the same stress in isolation. Once we started naming the patterns—unpaid overtime, shifting expectations, and write-ups that followed anyone who questioned them—we understood the problem was structural.

For us, organizing was listening to each other and documenting what happened when people were too tired or scared to speak. We built trust slowly, across different roles, backgrounds, and fears.

I stopped seeing myself as someone just trying to survive a job and started seeing myself as part of a collective with power.

Of course, there were moments we almost capitulated, like the time Ken spoke up during a staff meeting about staying late to cover shifts without pay, which resulted in him being written up for an “attitude” and “lack of teamwork.” After that, people stopped raising concerns openly during meetings. Conversations moved back to private messages and whispered check-ins between shifts.

At the time, it made speaking up seem like a liability. When management later called us “unprofessional” for asking questions, it didn’t feel abstract anymore. It felt like a warning.

But knowing silence isn’t harmless, we kept going.

Eventually, we learned how to speak collectively, as workers with shared demands. We wrote those demands down together: consistent staffing levels, clearer expectations for our roles, and proper pay for all hours worked. We practiced what to say before raising anything formally, and we made sure no one stood alone in those conversations. The shift was subtle but powerful: Instead of asking for favors, we started insisting on basic fairness. Instead of apologizing for existing, we named what was wrong.

Justice at work isn’t given. It’s built, slowly, imperfectly, by people who never planned to become organizers, but who refuse to stay small.

Some things changed, but not everything. Managers became more cautious about asking staff to stay beyond their shifts without pay. Schedules were shared earlier, even if not always consistently. There was more acknowledgment, however reluctant, that staffing shortages were affecting both workers and the quality of care. Conversations that used to be shut down began to happen more openly, even if they were tense. The wins were partial and fragile, but they were real.

I stopped seeing myself as someone just trying to survive a job and started seeing myself as part of a collective with power. Not perfect power. Not guaranteed power. But shared power, the kind that grows when people decide they deserve better together.

Justice at work isn’t given. It’s built, slowly, imperfectly, by people who never planned to become organizers, but who refuse to stay small.