Laid-off workers accuse Just The Pill of toxic work environment

Reproductive health organization Just The Pill (JTP) laid off 14 of its workers on Jan. 17, eight of whom were in charge of patient care. The layoffs come almost a year after workers raised concerns to management about a toxic work environment, including allegations of nepotism hires, lack of financial transparency, false promises while fundraising, and general incompetence from leadership. 

Founded in 2020 and based in Minnesota, JTP offers reproductive health services via telehealth and received media coverage for providing mobile clinics to abortion-seekers in states with bans after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The mobile clinics were a flagship initiative of the organization, with the promise of taking abortion rights to the borders of states where abortion has been banned. 

According to four laid-off workers who spoke to Prism but did not want to be named publicly, the mobile clinics have not been used as promised since at least early 2022. The mobile clinics were an idea that captivated JTP’s donors as well as mainstream media as a solution for growing abortion restrictions. The organization previously used a drawing of a van in promotional materials and told CBS News that a mobile clinic was serving patients in Colorado in December 2023.

“The donors really liked the mobile clinics; it was this innovative idea on how to provide abortion where you drive to people, you get closer to them,” said Nadine, a laid-off patient navigator who requested a pseudonym for fear of retribution. “We had a bunch of vans and mobile clinics, but they never got used. They never used them; we always did pop-up clinics [instead] because that’s what was ready and what worked for our patients.”

While pop-up clinics were usually hosted with community partners, mobile clinics have medical equipment, including an examination table, a sink, and a toilet, as well as equipment to provide first-trimester vacuum removals and deal with complications that could arise from medication abortions. One worker said the vans owned by JTP were only ever used to transport people seeking abortions, rather than to provide care from the vans. In addition to the pop-up clinics, JTP delivers abortion pills to telehealth patients in Minnesota, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, as well as to people traveling to get abortions. However, even those operations were delayed or not fully reported to the relevant state departments, as required by state law, workers said, describing “out-of-touch” and “incompetent” leadership.

Nadine, who previously worked at a brick-and-mortar abortion clinic, said leadership continuously ignored patient-facing workers’ feedback about how to make the process faster for abortion-seekers, particularly concerning the financial aid process, which took three to five days. There was also an internal debacle about driving the mobile clinics to the border between states, which patient navigators argued against because most abortion-seekers they attended to were flying to procure their abortions, rather than driving to the border. 

“I think they were lying. All these things they said they were going to do, none of that was being set up properly,” Nadine said.

A JTP spokesperson told Prism in an emailed statement that the organization made difficult decisions in recent months to improve the care they provide to abortion-seekers. 

“Under new leadership of Dr. Julie Amaon, interim executive director, Just The Pill has the right leader needed to navigate this moment and the reproductive healthcare landscape,” the statement reads. “In recent months, Just The Pill made significant and hard organizational changes to help ensure that we can move our work forward, supporting communities and caring for our patients. We work to deliver on our core purpose every day.” 

The statement did not respond to the workers’ specific allegations outlined by Prism over email.

Nepotism and a toxic work environment

Unionized JTP workers sent a two-page document, obtained by Prism, to the organization’s board members on Jan. 24, flagging the familial relationships between management employees. The document alleges that the decisions in the organization were being “made based on the feelings of the ‘familial cluster’ employees,” which resulted in a lack of direction that caused “patients to receive multiple, alarming, or otherwise inaccurate communications, harming our reputation as providers with patients and others in reprocare.” 

The document also lists what the union workers called the “familial cluster”: then-Executive Director Brooke Bailey, founder and Clinic Manager Francis Morales, and five employees who were related to them. Workers allege that some of these hires were given management positions they were not qualified to do. 

The role of patient navigator trainer, for example, was given to Bailey’s sister, who had no previous experience with abortion care, workers told Prism. Bailey’s husband also allegedly worked in data management but was fired when concerns about nepotism were brought to the organization’s board. Workers told Prism that they later learned that Bailey’s husband had not sent off reports for induced pregnancy terminations to the states in which JTP operates. Morales also hired her sister and another relative to run the financial assistance department, overseeing a process that two workers told Prism was unnecessarily slow because of the pair’s incompetence and lack of experience in abortion funds. 

“It didn’t seem like they were interested in making the process as seamless as it could be for patients,” Joey, another laid-off patient navigator using a pseudonym, told Prism. 

Approached for comment, Bailey said, “It’s been a year since I left the organization, but everyone that we hired was capable and competent to do the jobs they were hired for.”

Prism was unable to reach Morales for comment.

The four former workers also recounted instances of racism and transphobia from the “familial cluster,” describing the work environment as “toxic” and “hostile.” Despite at least three reports of this kind of behavior by at least two members of the staff—including misgendering, refusal to add pronouns to patient intake forms, and aggressive dismissals of people of color’s suggestions—nobody was held accountable, workers said. 

Everything came to a head in mid-May when workers’ paychecks were delayed by two days. This came after months of conversations between JTP leadership and the JTP union about unclear job descriptions, allegations of responsibility creep, and one instance in which Bailey ended a remote all-staff meeting to avoid listening to feedback from a BIPOC staff member, according to the union workers’ document as well as Prism’s interviews with workers. By June, Bailey was fired by the organization’s board, though staff members were never directly told why her employment was terminated. Morales was also fired in July without a public explanation. 

Lack of financial transparency 

After Bailey was fired, the role of interim executive director was filled by Dr. Julie Amaon, a Minnesota-based family physician. For months, workers told Prism, Amaon avoided answering questions about the workers’ job security, despite also making clear to staff that JTP was short on a large amount of money to make it through the whole fiscal year. Before the holidays, Amaon assured staff that layoffs would be a last resort. 

“She made it clear over and over and over again that staffing changes weren’t going to be considered until March,” Joey said. “That was my understanding.”

On Dec. 19, 2024, JTP Workers United sent an email to Amaon and board members requesting access to management calendars. “It is essential that all employees have insight into what management is working on, just as managers have visibility into our schedules and workloads,” the email reads. This was one of three emails sent to management that week. The other two requested that union members be invited to budget meetings in January to “build collaboration, transparency, and communication around this process” and that a union representative be included in board meetings. Both of these were ignored, workers told Prism.

On Jan. 3, Board President Angie Mejía sent an email to the JTP Workers United alleging that the union was an illegitimate bargaining unit due to “not [being] recognized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or by JTP.” However, an email to staff dated June 9, 2023 and signed by Bailey and the board of directors, had previously recognized the union was “started by employees to build mutual accountability and more balanced power between employees and managers.” 

While the JTP Workers United was organizing a response to Mejía’s email, most of the staff was laid off on Jan. 17, prompting some workers to believe the layoffs were in part a union-busting strategy. 

“We have been arguing with management about our jobs not having sufficient responsibility definition and responsibility creep happening,” one worker said. “After months of working it out inside the union, we finally drafted three emails demanding that we be allowed into the budgeting meetings as we had initially been told we would be allowed into. Three weeks after those emails were sent, we were fired, which is why I partially think that this is union busting because we were laid off with no plans.”

However, not all workers agree. 

“I think the leadership at JTP has been wildly incompetent since the very beginning, in every type of program design, implementation, all of it has been poorly planned, poorly executed, no forethought was put into anything,” Joey said. “I think that most of the staff being laid off is a result of absolute incompetence more than a specific action aimed at union busting.”

After laying off most of the organization’s employees, JTP management told former staff that positions would become available after an organizational restructuring and that laid-off workers were welcome to reapply. The JTP website warns users that they have paused patient intake, in the meantime linking to other abortion providers. 

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor

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