Open Society Foundation: An Open Letter from Workers to the Executive Leadership Team and Global Board

Dear Mark Malloch Brown, Alex Soros, Members of Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and Global Board,

We, the undersigned staff of Open Society Foundations, write to openly share our concerns regarding the restructuring and shift to the Opportunity Model as proposed. We support a reorganization that is humane, conscientious and responsible towards both employees and grantees – with the knowledge that we have the resources to make this possible. We want to ensure that OSF’s resources are stewarded ethically and responsibly, enabling us to strengthen, or at least maintain, our collective ability to advance open societies. In sharing these concerns, we hope to build a stronger OSF together and center Open Society values in the reorganizing process.

We are deeply concerned by the proposal to outsource essential functions currently within staff capacity to contractors, temporary staff or fixed term workers outside Union protection. Inadvertently or not, this shift will undermine employees' labor protections and ability to collectively organize. This has the effect of union busting, and is antithetical to OSF’s commitment to strengthen workers’ dignity and rights. Management desires a labor force that can “expand and contract as required to meet demand." The flexibility sought should not be contingent upon precarious employment, which would enable neither nimbleness nor efficiency. Constantly onboarding and offboarding temporary employees and consultants will hinder institutional memory, and deepening our dependence upon private-sector consultants will introduce new costs and threats to OSF interests. We ask Leadership to cease plans to outsource good Union jobs currently within staff capacity, ensuring that our outward support of labor movements applies internally to our own workers.

We are further troubled by the proposed severance process. Colleagues who declined 2021’s Voluntary Separation Package (VSP) chose to weather a demoralizing restructuring due to our commitment to advance human rights, and the belief that Leadership shared this commitment. Withholding this voluntary option in 2023 while laying off 40% of the workforce penalizes colleagues’ past loyalty; colleagues should be able to depart dignifiedly with a restored VSP. We call for severance packages that improve upon those offered in 2021, accounting for the emotional and professional costs incurred since (as documented by OSF's own Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey and Culture Survey, which documented colleagues’ diminished mental health and experience of inclusion and respect under the restructuring). We request that fixed term colleagues, as in 2021, are treated equitably and are included in the same severance and employment opportunities offered to their peers.

Finally, we are concerned with the implications of dismantling programs and closing bodies of work irresponsibly. We are deeply troubled by the absence of a wind-down schedule that provides grantees ample time to prepare and adapt to the dissolution of OSF’s regional and global units. In earlier phases of the Transformation, grantees received inadequate communication and preparation to sustainably operate following the closure of their grants. The hasty, haphazard manner in which OSF discontinued work led to inconsistent communication with grantees, who reported confusion about the purpose of tie-off grants. Some grantees were told their relationship with OSF was ending, only to receive new grants from new units. Colleagues responsible for stewarding these relationships shared evidence that tie-off funding and new grants systematically favored the Global North. Coupling rapid layoffs with the demands of widespread closures will exploit remaining OSF staff, who will again work far beyond their assigned workloads to compensate. Averting these issues requires the ELT to develop an extended wind-down timeline that sufficiently staffs and closes down lines of work in a manner responsible to grantees.

We send this letter in alignment with the full mission of the Open Society Foundations. We come from and exist within the very communities with which we seek to have an impact, making OSF's mission – our mission – critical to us. Making every voice heard, supporting marginalized communities and advancing human rights starts within ourselves.

Sincerely,
The Staff of Open Society Foundations
CWA Local 1180