Clean Water Action reviews about "coworker"

The national canvass management is abusive and toxic. I was gaslit, lied to, and and treated terribly by the national canvass staff when I stood up for myself regarding my needs to attend to my health and insisting that the terms under which I accepted my role as a field manager be honored. I know of at least two other canvass staff in other offices who were forced out of the organization by the same national staff under similar circumstances and several others who left the organization of their own accord because of those national staff members' behavior and treatment of state-level canvass staff. The same members of management protected abusive staff at the local level (racism, transphobia, sexism, generally abusive behavior) that was reported by multiple staff for years. If you never have to interact with the national canvass staff then it's not an issue, but the manipulative and deceptive treatment of state-level staff by the national canvass staff is untenable for sustained employment. On a seperate note, while the canvassing pay structure used to be very lucrative, it is now pretty sad in comparison to most canvassing/fundraising pay structures and there are multiple policies in place that disincentivize high performance. As an established employee, I retained my original bonus rate as a field manager, but newer employees have a significantly lower compensation rate.

The job itself won't really help you to get very far in life, unless you want to be a local grassroots campaign organizer (nothing wrong with that, btw). Management doesn't help you to succeed; if you're not making quota, they just blame you and give vague suggestions like "be more confident", "try to target higher", "work on your close", and other things that you are already doing. Your base pay is near the minimum wage (varies per state) during the 3 week training period, which you're only going to make it out of by sheer luck due to quota requirements. You have to raise a certain dollar amount each night while canvassing, or you're let go. However, the amount that people chose to donate is largely out of your control; as the amount of wealthy households, households that agree with CWA's campaigns, households that aren't busy doing something else, etc. aren't evenly distributed between canvassers. Once you make staff, your pay still fluctuates with the dollar amount you receive in donations. This means that your pay partly determined by luck, which makes it difficult to budget with and just isn't the best thing to put workers through. You're trained to recite a memorized pitch, which most people notice; creativity is rather frowned upon for a progressive organization. Work environment can be juvenile at times; employees are rewarded everyday based on donations, signatures, etc. the got the previous day, like getting gold stars in elementary school. Not only does this waste time, but it's annoying when you know you're working hard, but can't convert turn people into environmental activists at their doorsteps. The entire staff is afraid of offending anyone or being offended, which makes being genuine with your coworkers difficult. Hours are 2-10PM, which can make balancing work and life difficult for people who like to back-load their days. It also means that you don't get to eat dinner until after 10:30 PM everyday if you have any commute.

Salary, hours, long-term career opportunities

They regularly commit labor law violations. They lie about what employees will be paid and what hours they will work. They make it sound like a compelling job and then you end up living in literal poverty. I was told I'd be making at least 1,200 per week. My first paycheck was less than $200. They insisted it would get better but it didn't. This is an evil employer. Do not work here. I literally saw supervisors rewrite time sheets after everybody left for the night to make it look like they worked fewer hours than they did. They actively discourage new people from asking questions, hoping to entrap them. They literally say "All your questions will be answered in time" when someone starts to ask normal questions like "When are breaks," "What are my hours," "How will I be paid," "Where are we going in this van," "When will my shift end," "Why is my paycheck a fraction of what you promised," "How do you calculate wages," etc. Don't even get me started on the pay structure; they go out of their way to make it an extremely complicated formula only certain doctoral mathematicians could comprehend. The majority of CWA staff do not understand it and cannot explain it. Many, many employees have to turn to sex work in order to survive. They can't even get service jobs because they can't work regular retail hours. By the time they realize all of their paychecks for 40 hours of work are going to come out to ~$200, they're trapped. The supervisors are also young and inexperienced. There was one worker in our office who was awful to women (especially Black women). There were dozens of complaints filed against him but he wasn't fired until we went over our supervisor’s head to someone in another department because the perpetrator had started behaving violently (stalking, threats, harassment) towards a female coworker and we knew nothing would be done if we submitted another complaint to our supervisor since we'd done it so many times. They want to be cool, chill, friendly bosses. But it's not acceptable. Supervisors should be grownups who know how to discipline and terminate employees who abuse and threaten to attack their coworkers. That same supervisor went on to have an affair with a direct report for upwards of a year. This organization preaches inclusion and acceptance and human rights and progressive ideals but behind closed doors, it's one of the cruelest, most toxic institutions in America. Staff are told they're organizing communities, but they're not. They're just begging for donations that fund the salaries of a handful of people at the top who contribute basically nothing. The mission was once great, but it has devolved into a nationwide scam. And nobody suffers more from this scam than Clean Water Action employees. There is no HR. There is no oversight. There is no accountability. Every aspect of this organization is messed up. Don't work here.

Canvassing is a difficult job and is not for everyone. But if you are passionate, hard working, and good at mood management then you can definitely be successful. Mood management can be challenging because you interact with the public and obviously not everyone will be a supporter, but Clean Water Action does a good job of supporting canvassers and teaching ways to maximize time with supporters and manage mood.

This is a long story to explain so I apologize in advance for length. To give background, canvassing hierarchy worked like this: regular canvassers (2-10pm work hours), trainers (1:30-10pm with only slightly better pay) and field managers (1-10pm, sometimes 12-10pm, salary pay with some minor benefits). Then Obama came in and said that all salary employees making below a certain amount need to pay overtime. CWA decided rather than pay the field managers decently (overtime pay) and not make everything literal insanity, that instead they would cut everyone's hours so that field managers only worked a 40 hour week. This meant that trainers when only worked 7.5 hours a day, and canvassers 7 hour days. Oh and our lunch break was taken away. Which is illegal by the way. In addition quota (fundraising expectation in order to keep job) went up, and we were told our pay would go up however it did not, at least while I was there. CWA claims to be a progressive organization, yet they've treated the canvass like crap with all these recent changes. In my opinion it was very hypocritical. Which is the main reason why I left. While I loved the program work they were doing, I can't support or work for a group that does good things yet treats their "underlings" like crap. "Underlings" who raise money to pay the salaries of the program staff, who might not have a job otherwise (don't confuse this with me saying the program staff treated the canvass badly- they were great. It was the organization as a whole). Basically, underlings who are a pretty integral part to the organization.

Long nights Long Commute Commission based

pay awful and from what I hear has only gotten worse. Predatory sexual relationships between supervisors and staff not uncommon. Discriminatory and sexually harassing behaviors routinely go unchecked.

it was easy to get down, it was hard to go door to door and know that I had to reach a target goal in order to keep my job. we would often get out later than 10 pm and have to get there early. street parking wasn’t the easiest.