The next chair of the Democratic National Committee will not only have to solve the identity crisis consuming the Democratic Party, but will immediately be faced with an institution rife with workplace complaints and a deteriorating morale.
Some of the internal frustration is an outgrowth of last November’s election, with Democrats still shuffling blame for the loss. But it is also specific to the way the party has been run, especially over the last several months.
The DNC’s leadership is currently facing labor violation complaints regarding recently laid off employees, accusations that managers have issued retaliatory threats to those who have wanted to raise internal issues and divisions over who gets to have a voice in the party and who doesn’t, according to conversations with more than a dozen former and current DNC staff, former Harris campaign officials and party strategists.
The Democratic National Committee laid off more than 500 people after the election, leaving it with the smallest staff it’s had since 2017, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The aftermath of those cuts has led to widespread grievances and has raised questions about the party’s financial situation.
“Just the way that this was handled was almost intentionally cruel,” one current DNC employee told NOTUS. “It’s a real betrayal. And there’s a lot of talk about how the party is going to live up to those values of being pro-worker under the new chair.”
A DNC spokesperson said they regretted losing “hardworking staff,” but that layoffs are a “tough reality of our industry” meant to support the financial health of the organization.
“While the DNC has met the terms of the union agreement negotiated by the CBA, we share the entire DNC family’s frustration and continue to provide resources to all members of the team to support them in this transition,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Multiple sources said that senior leadership refused requests from the staff union to enter into impact bargaining over the layoffs, which affected more than just those hired for the campaign season. The party cut longtime staff positions, including one person who had worked at the DNC for nearly 40 years, with little warning and no severance. Leaders rejected calls for an all staff meeting to address the changes, two sources said.
Several laid off staff said they haven’t been able to, or just recently, accessed their unemployment benefits like health care, blaming the organization for the delays.
Sources told NOTUS that there’s a perception among some that DNC staff, and former staff, have effectively been silenced from speaking out about perceived issues within the party. That includes some staff who are frustrated by the role former Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aides — like Jen O’Malley Dillon — still play in Democratic politics.
Multiple laid off staffers were sent an email with copies of their signed nondisclosure agreements during the height of online conversations over how the Democratic Party lost the election, which they took to as an effort to stop newly pushed-out people from chiming in.
The DNC denied attempting to intimidate former employees, stating that it was a usual practice adopted over a year ago at the request of departing staff.
“The DNC has never, and will never, silence employees from sharing their experiences about working at the DNC,” said a DNC spokesperson in a statement. “The confidentiality agreement states explicitly that it’s solely intended to safeguard proprietary data and confidential information, and not to bar employees from speaking about their working conditions. The DNC will always stand by our values and ensure that every person that works at the DNC is treated with dignity and respect.”
The version of the NDA which was obtained by NOTUS includes a clause which states the signee won’t make statements that “adversely affect the goodwill or reputation of the Committee.”
The Service Employees International Union Local 500, which represents DNC employees, has filed two complaints with the National Labor Relations Board since the election. The first was filed on Nov. 21, alleging that the DNC violated the “coercive rules” clause when it sent around copies of NDAs to more than a handful of employees being laid off. Another complaint was filed after leaders rejected calls to bargain over widespread layoffs.
Staffers did receive 60-day notices in September that large-scale layoffs were set to happen, according to the DNC, as well as repeated notices from HR. Staffers pushed back and said that none of the notices were specific to individual people.
And in one email, obtained by NOTUS, a human resources employee attached the signed four-page confidentiality agreement and wrote, “As a reminder, you are still bound by this agreement and will continue to be bound by this agreement after your departure from the DNC.”
The two frontrunners of the race for DNC chair, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, have hosted events with laid off staff, according to a Democrat familiar with the events. Martin’s campaign said the event was intended as a thank-you happy hour. Both Martin and Wikler, along with fellow candidate Chuck Rocha, donated to a GoFundMe that has raised more than $25,000 for affected workers. But it’s unclear to what extent the chairs are promising wholesale changes to the status quo.
“Leadership did not and does not want to address these issues. Everything that I’ve experienced has been swept under the rug,” said one laid off staffer.
The NDAs sent chills throughout the organization, both among those who were laid off and those still around, multiple people told NOTUS.
“It really comes down to this use of the NDAs to intimidate people,” one source familiar with conversations said. Until that happened, the source had viewed DNC management as willing to work with employees on workplace issues. “It felt very pointed to us and felt like union busting,” they said.
Asked whether the use of NDAs post-employment was standard, the source said: “Everything I’ve heard from my [colleagues], this use has been unprecedented. Maybe not the existence of NDAs, but definitely the use of them after the fact.”
The DNC said that a clause was written at the top of the NDA that states that the confidentiality agreement only pertained to proprietary information and trade secrets. And when it was clear that employees were confused about what could be said, another email was sent in late November clarifying the agreement. One former staffer said they did not get that second email.
In another instance of perceived intimidation, a team of mostly Black and brown staffers at the DNC went to leadership alleging their manager was creating a hostile work environment and seeking an intervention, according to two sources. They also alerted the union that they were drafting a letter to formally complain. Instead of mediating the concerns privately, as the staffers requested, leadership invited the manager to the meeting. Staffers were so dismayed that they never sent the letter.
Former and current staffers told NOTUS they have swapped horror stories about how they were let go from their jobs. The group of employees who off-boarded campaign staffers in Delaware were told to report back to headquarters on their way back to Washington, D.C., only to be told they were almost all being laid off once they finished their work, according to a senior strategist who worked on the campaign. Another staffer said the DNC tried to deny him paternity leave after initially telling him he was safe from the layoffs. This led him to delay filing his paperwork for paternity leave, only to be laid off before it was submitted. (The DNC eventually settled with him.)
“Things like this were everywhere for the last four years, and the union has been silent on it because Joe Biden was president. They wanted to set aside party infighting for the sake of doing the right thing,” the strategist said, pointing fingers at Sam Cornale, Monica Guardiola and Roger Lau, all of whom are in senior leadership. “These people took it as a sign of weakness, that they could roll the union, not just a sign that they were doing something selfless to help the party.”
On the severance issues, the DNC said that during the collective bargaining agreement with the committee’s union, it was the union that “withdrew their severance pay proposal” and did not include it in the final negotiations — making it not required for the DNC to pay once layoffs occurred. A current employee pushed back on the DNC, saying that nothing in the CBA limited the DNC from still paying it out and “living up to being the party of working people.”
“It’s absurd that we have to argue with the leadership of a party that claims to champion labor rights that its own workers deserve to be treated with dignity,” said the current staffer.
Multiple laid off employees said they couldn’t access their unemployment benefits, like Continuation of Health Coverage, or COBRA, which allows employees and their families to temporarily keep their employers’ health insurance once they’ve left a job. One staffer said they had trouble getting help from the DNC to figure out the hold up.
“I have children, you know, I’m a single mother. I’m barely surviving, but I know that everybody has their own situation. It’s just really inconsiderate,” said the laid off staffer. “And I was shocked at the fact that this was an issue, and I would assume that all this would have been put in place prior to the campaign.”
The DNC said they helped get both issues resolved in a timely manner and cited vendor issues.
All of these issues have contributed to a lack of morale for many employees at the DNC, three sources said.
“I don’t see how we as a party can continue to move forward and try to advance and try to put people in as chair, and we’ve got all of these things, but we’re not truly addressing the inequity and equality that’s going on within our party,” said a laid off staffer.
Outside the building, members are seeing the same conflicts.
“Instead of worrying about how we can market ourselves to earn back the trust of the American voters, I think we should just do the work of earning back the trust of the American voters, and part of that starts with living our values at home,” one current DNC member said.
The internal tension is compounded by the party’s financial picture.
Two senior Democrats with knowledge of the situation said Friday’s FEC reports, which reflect the end of 2024, will show the DNC with millions of dollars in cash on hand, but cautioned that some of that money is restricted and cannot be used for things like payroll, making it necessary for the next DNC chair to quickly hit the donor trail.
The financial hurdles have also raised questions around who will remain involved in the party — like O’Malley Dillon, whom many Democrats partially fault for the failures of the Harris campaign, despite its historic fundraising.
Tensions over O’Malley Dillon spilled out in public at the reception of the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting on Wednesday night, when some members showed up with printed signs saying “Jen O’Malley Dillon supports Wikler” in an attempt to taunt Wikler.
A source familiar with the discussions told NOTUS that Wikler has told DNC members that O’Malley Dillon is backing his campaign — which Wikler’s campaign denied to NOTUS. Some members — particularly state party chairs who took issue with how the Harris campaign was run or want to see her out of the party apparatus — have balked at the notion of her support.
Wikler’s campaign said the two haven’t been in contact “at all for months” regarding the DNC race. And they lambasted the members who showed up with signs Wednesday, while suggesting another candidate for party chair was behind them.
“This is juvenile, mean and flatly untrue,” a spokesperson for Wikler’s campaign told NOTUS. “Whoever did this is unworthy of leading our party in this incredibly serious moment.”
O’Malley Dillon has been trying to find ways to prop up the defunct Harris campaign’s finances without much help from the DNC, two Democrats close to the campaign told NOTUS. The DNC’s current chair, Jaime Harrison, refused to take on more of the Harris campaign’s expenses, according to three sources.
“They didn’t mortgage the building,” said one source, who noted in past cycles they have had to cover more debt from campaigns. Instead, Harrison has “been very open telling people that he’s pushing back and that he hasn’t allowed them to go into as much, take as much from the DNC as they could have.”
One senior Democratic strategist was more direct: “[The campaign] can’t force him to do anything. So he intended to exercise his authority as chair, meaning all invoices, all payments, everything comes through him, and he is not fucking around.”
The Harris campaign denied ongoing financial difficulty, or that O’Malley Dillon has been working to rectify it. “None of this is true,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement responding to questions.
As the party rebuilds now, some members running for leadership are openly rooting for a clean break with the past.
“I think there’s definitely a desire for generational shift, for change agents to come into the party. I think there’s been a lot of frustration about feeling like the party has sort of become a little bit stale,” said Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party who is running to be vice chair of the DNC. “And so there is a desire to see, you know, folks who don’t want to just sort of do the same thing over again, but really do want to make change.”
—
Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.