Quick Take
Community Bridges, Santa Cruz County’s largest nonprofit, doesn’t value or treat its front-line workers with dignity, write Community Bridges employees Lidia Montesino and Mercy Gonzales. The company favors managers and executives, while the people delivering aid and care struggle in a workplace that doesn’t offer them enough training or support. A nonprofit built on equity shouldn’t mirror the inequities it claims to fight, they write. Here, they challenge Community Bridges to value its workers as much as the workers value clients and lay out three ways to start rebuilding trust.
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Community Bridges, one of Santa Cruz County’s largest nonprofit social service providers, is cracking.
The staff – we are just two of about 125 front-line workers – are demoralized and not receiving the sort of compassion we show our clients. This is making it difficult – impossible in some cases – to have a well-functioning organization that promptly delivers essential services to people in need in the county.
Community Bridges workers are told we are part of a close-knit family. The walls of our workplace brim with posters with words like “commitment,” “compassion” and “integrity.” Our community assistance programs — like transportation, health care, senior care, crisis support, early education — provide no-cost lifelines to about 22,000 people every year.
We treat our clients with dignity, but our management does not offer us the same courtesy. Instead too many of us feel disrespected and disregarded. Lately, we were forced to watch as five beloved colleagues were unfairly laid off, including one who was fired just as she became seriously ill. We are seeing our staff navigate complex grant requirements and program expectations without proper guidance or preparation. We are expected to deliver results with little direction and limited training and support.
To us, this means Community Bridges is failing to uphold its values. The poor management style and stress to workers is impacting clients whose services are often delayed. This makes difficult lives harder. We also feel this breaks community trust with donors, grantors and grant-reliant families, who support us because of the values we espouse.
We are especially concerned with management’s callous treatment of staff.
In June, we believe our managers unfairly laid off several workers, including one of us (Mercy). In my case, it happened after I was diagnosed with precancerous tissue growth. The layoff came two days after I had received medical leave approval under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Management cited budgetary concerns, but the budget showed funding for my position. My record was exemplary.
At the same time as the layoffs, several managers received $30,000 raises. We believe the layoffs occurred without cause – mainly as a means to keep from paying my rising insurance costs. Our lowest staff salaries are in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, while the CEO makes about $182,000.
We believe management violated our union contract that stipulates layoffs must start from the least to the most senior worker. I had two years’ seniority and believe I should have been protected.
Our union fought the layoffs and Community Bridges reinstated all of the other laid-off program workers except me, the senior worker. As a single mother, I was terrified for my family’s health and future. But through the unwavering support of my family, coworkers and our union, I was rehired and regained hope.
But the experience was taxing. Staff still feel demoralized by the experience.
Delayed grants, denied opportunities
Community Bridges maintains a disproportionate number of managers, 1 for every 3.6 employees. Its top-heaviness is ill-attuned to deliver services to our clients. When grants are delayed, families fall behind on rent, struggle to put food on the table and lose opportunities that cannot be rescheduled.
For nearly a year, families were left waiting for grant assistance as leadership failed to provide a clear structure or ensure program readiness. Management shuffled responsibilities onto staff, who were left to improvise with minimal direction. The problem is not staff capability — rather the absence of planning, training and leadership leaves staff struggling to navigate challenges that are easily prevented.
This dynamic highlights the toxic, steamrolling work culture we experience daily. We and our colleagues are burned out. Many of our families have been left in limbo, which erodes their trust in us and in the systems meant to serve them.
In today’s political climate, our community cannot afford these failures.
The risks are too high: 20% of adults 65-plus in Santa Cruz County rely on SNAP benefits, while approximately 6,944 Santa Cruzans live below the poverty level.
It’s time to rebuild a culture rooted in integrity, collaboration and accountability — the foundation our families and staff deserve.
We have put together the following requests of management that we believe will help rectify this broken relationship. The first is to meet with our union, staff and board of directors to engage in building a collaborative culture that cares for workers and prioritizes client interests and dispenses the cult of personality surrounding management. This will also ensure transparent use of grant resources while ensuring funding and compliance.
The second is to take our call for meaningful reforms seriously. Courageous staff raised these issues several times in a professional and respectful manner. Others remain in fear. Fear corrodes trust and turns openness into risk of dismissal or retaliation from top down, where collaboration suffers and the bridges meant to connect us begin to crack.
In an organization built on community, silence should never feel safer than truth.
The third request is recognition of our right to engage in this dialogue — without retaliation, for all staff and those who speak out. Abrupt layoffs, promotions, excessive monitoring, assignment shifts, demotions, office moves, delays, denials of transfers or leave, all will be viewed as retaliatory and we will fight them on sound legal footing.
In our experience, Community Bridges has a long, unspoken, deeply troubling and sad history of retaliation. This behavior is illegal and affronts our board of directors, staff, families and clients we serve.
We love the work we do, and we believe deeply in Community Bridges’ mission and in the families we serve. Yet belief alone is not enough. Integrity, fairness, and respect must guide every decision — from entry-level workers to executive leadership — or the very bridges we strive to build risk being burned.
Mercy Gonzales is a community advocate who works in the early education division at Community Bridges.
Lidia Montesino is a longtime Family Resource Center advocate with Community Bridges’ Family Resource Collective. She is dedicated to serving families, children and seniors across Santa Cruz County.
Editor’s note: Lookout has edited this piece to include the correct lowest salary range for workers and to more clearly specify that this is an opinion piece. Community Bridges CEO responded to this piece here.