{"id":751484,"date":"2021-09-14T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T16:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=751484"},"modified":"2021-09-14T12:51:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T16:51:01","slug":"pramila-jayapal-axed-staffers-without-severance-as-she-decried-employers-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pramila-jayapal-axed-staffers-without-severance-as-she-decried-employers-greed\/","title":{"rendered":"Pramila Jayapal Axed Staffers Without Severance as She Decried Employers\u2019 \u2018Greed\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpramila-jayapal-axed-staffers-without-severance-as-she-decried-employers-greed%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=751484&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rsz_gettyimages-1188103404.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), who repeatedly decried employers&#8217; &#8220;greed&#8221; during the coronavirus pandemic, last year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/addybaird\/pramila-jayapal-staff-treatment?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fired<\/a> two staffers without severance pay,&nbsp;according to <i>BuzzFeed News<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Jayapal in May 2020 introduced the Paycheck Recovery Act and in June&nbsp;urged&nbsp;Congress to pass the bill so that laid-off workers and business owners could &#8220;survive this&nbsp;crisis.&#8221; The bill, which Congress ultimately did not pass, would not have covered federal staffers. Jayapal in November laid off two of her staffers with only six weeks&#8217; notice.<\/p>\n<p>The progressive congresswoman and former activist has made a name for herself in Congress as a defender of workers&#8217; rights against ruthless employers. During the pandemic, she <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RepJayapal\/status\/1392966634143305732\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blasted<\/a>&nbsp;the &#8220;greed&#8221; of employers who refuse to &#8220;pay workers a living wage.&#8221; Yet she has developed a reputation on Capitol Hill of being a horrible boss, and former staff members say there is a &#8220;serious disconnect&#8221; between the congresswoman&#8217;s rhetoric and her own managerial style.<\/p>\n<p>Interviews conducted by <em>BuzzFeed<\/em> with former staff members reveal that Jayapal runs an office with &#8220;unrealistic standards&#8221; and intolerance for small mistakes. She has one of the highest staff turnover rates in the House of Representatives. Some former staffers attributed their departure to poor wages and a &#8220;lack of upward mobility.&#8221; Others criticized the representative, who says she is a champion of the working class, for running her employees ragged, often for more than 12-hour workdays.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve worked in bad environments before, and I have worked in some awful environments before for some awful people. I&#8217;ve been colleagues with some awful people,&#8221; one former Jayapal staff member said. &#8220;I have never worked in a place that has made me so miserable and so not excited for public service as Pramila Jayapal&#8217;s office.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another staff member said that while Jayapal may be an effective advocate for workers, she &#8220;just doesn&#8217;t recognize that the staff are also humans.&#8221; Jayapal yelled at one staff member following a botched witness questioning, leaving that person in tears, and held another responsible for her weight gain because there wasn&#8217;t enough gym time in her schedule.<\/p>\n<p>Current members of Jayapal&#8217;s staff defended the congresswoman against charges of mismanagement and abuse of staff.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Women of color are often unjustly targeted, regularly held to higher standards than their male colleagues, and always put under a sexist microscope,&#8221; said Jayapal chief of staff Lilah Pomerance.<\/p>\n<p>Jayapal spokesman Chris Evans also dismissed the congresswoman&#8217;s high turnover rate as a &#8220;sensational&#8221; statistic that doesn&#8217;t acknowledge the number of former Jayapal staffers who have gone on to serve in the Biden administration or more senior roles in Congress.<\/p>\n<p>But Jayapal&#8217;s behavior has led many former staff members to encourage applicants to seek opportunities elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was like, \u2018Run in the other direction,'&#8221; one former staffer warned a colleague. &#8220;I just wouldn&#8217;t put someone I know through [this]; $40,000, $50,000, I&#8217;m sorry, it&#8217;s just not worth your mental health. I think a lot of us are going to be in therapy for a very long time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Many former Jayapal staff members said they were willing to speak out against the congresswoman even if their words might detract from the progressive movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), who repeatedly decried employers&#8217; &#8220;greed&#8221; during the coronavirus pandemic, last year fired two staffers without severance pay,\u00a0according to BuzzFeed News. Jayapal in May 2020 introduced &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}