They almost never see their coworkers. But next month, 342 employees of for-profit crisis call center Protocall will vote on whether to unite and be union represented.
Founded in 1997, Portland-headquartered Protocall has hundreds of contracts with local governments, hospitals, universities, behavioral health networks, and employee assistance programs. Clients include the employee assistance program at Canopy, the suicide hotline at University of Oregon, and the statewide 988 crisis lines in New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia.
When individuals are in crisis and call a hotline, they’re connected with a Protocall employee working remotely from home somewhere in the United States. Call takers rely on scripts that are customized depending on where the call originated and who the paying client is.
Pay starts at about $24.50 an hour, or roughly $28 for those who have a clinical or therapeutic license. Workers must have a bachelor’s degree and some experience in the mental health field. When they start they get six weeks of paid full-time training in counseling and crisis response.
“Our primary job is to make sure we stabilize the situation, and then get referrals set up,” said Skylar Tanaka, a pro-union Protocall worker in Knoxville, Tennessee. “Essentially, it’s making sure by the end of the call that they have a plan for after the call to be able to either follow up with long-term care or get to whatever location they need, like the hospital if it’s an emergent enough situation.”
Tanaka says the work can be gratifying. But it can be stressful and challenging too.
In February Tanaka and some coworkers began discussing the challenges — should they find new jobs, or unionize and improve the jobs they have? Tanaka said they decided there were enough good things about the job to justify sticking around and organizing to make it better. Protocall workers looked at several unions and decided on Office and Professional Employees International Union. The national union asked Vancouver-based Local 11 to help.
After gathering signatures from a supermajority of their coworkers, they asked company owner Phil Evans to voluntarily recognize their union. Instead, Protocall filed a petition asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election.
The election will be conducted by mail. Ballots will be mailed out Aug. 25 and are due by Sept. 29.
