Trees Atlanta has evolved and grown significantly since it's inception. This growth has not been a harmonious cycle of events. The 'class-based' hierarchy system here is strong and is deeply embedded everywhere much like the kudzu vine that the field serfs are sent out to eternally destroy.
For example Trees Atlanta are always hiring 24/7. And this barrage of hirelings of all walks of life receive ZERO ON-BOARDING. The employee turn-over is extreme and it's always new hires within a year or so who can't hold out anymore and leave because it is a complete DEAD END. You will be thrown in to the fields and streets of Atlanta as a custodian for as long as you are there. Some of these eternal field-workers hold out at this place in hopes that they will receive a raise or get insurance of some kind just to survive but IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. You will be hourly for the rest of your life even if you have 5 doctorate degrees in environmental science and the Nobel Prize. Doesn't matter. The nepotism is so strong in management that your years at graduate school or your years of experience or even years of inexperience mean the same thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
You shall become a field serf and that is what you are. You see lawn crews cutting grass right? Pulling weeds? Sweeping? That's you.
The rapid turnover staff are obviously hourly workers without health insurance. You might say to yourself "hey the longer I'm here maybe I'll get a promotion and be salaried and get insurance if I show up on time every day and do a good job because I was told that would happen when I got hired". Wrong this can only happen if someone quits. And then it's a rat race to get that coveted insured position. 3 year employees can be looked over 2 week new-hires if that's how management feels that day. They literally do not care about how good you are at your job, at anything, nobody is watching. It's about following orders without question and hassle. Want to talk about it with HUMAN RESOURCES? Sorry we don't have one.
Trees Atlanta rarely fires anybody either. They 'slow-fire' employees by offering them unfulfilled promises and delusions that everything is OK. If you are in the field labor category and finally can't take the dehumanization anymore and you do quit, then it's whatever to management overlords. They always hire some other suckers straight out of college who've never had a real job before or know what it's like to be taken advantage of by a non-profit masquerade.
To management it's a numbers game. Number of trees and the $$$$ spent and lost within an intense deep penny-pinching culture to the extreme.
"How many trees did we plant last year? 2000+. Great let's do 4000+ this fall and not pay the field staff planting the trees any differently that will really be awesome and we will get more money and donations from all of this. If they get it done faster than normal then let's plant an additional 500 trees at a corporate park instead of giving the low paid poverty stricken staff a bonus EVER."
-Management
Sounds good right? This labor is performed physically by the lowest paid staff without health insurance along with a vast horde of volunteers who are the direct responsibility of the field staff. The legwork and preparation and execution is left to the lowest paid staff without health insurance, without proper gear, old hand-me-down broken equipment, broken vehicles, on an on, and they have to manage and direct large volumes of volunteers on a regular basis.
The office staff on the other hand at Trees Atlanta are people who have worked in their position for an extreme amount of years and have no plans to give up working their easy salaried job with benefits in an air-conditioned room all day and have no plans to move on. They are tenured. Office staff also have no desire to show the field staff what they do because then why would they do that? To be replaced? Never. Tenured. But IF that does happen, more nepotism obviously.
The office staff idle their time by devising various projects and/or peddling schemes to get donations from awesome corporations or literally anybody. It's strange that office staff receive health insurance. I guess the $50 budget slow computers they sit in front of all day are dangerous. Wrists may cramp up, heck that mouse looks dangerous.
Another massive slap in the face to the beleaguered field staff is that anywhere on Trees Atlanta social media it's saturated with content of you guessed it, office staff holding shovels and smiling like they are doing physical labor and are the heroes of gentrify Atlanta culture. But hey that's comes as no surprise. Hypocrisy reigns.
Right before COVID-19 hit, Trees Atlanta started a hilariously marketing campaign flouting their green painted concrete box office building next to a massive AT&T truck parking lot as a venue destination for events and weddings to garner additional $$$$.
So what is happening with all this growing revenue and success on top of the penny-pinching? To follow the money, management are peddling a scheme to carve out a Trees Atlanta mega cathedral somewhere out in a pre-gentrified area of Atlanta that rumor has it will be the premier utopia of harmoniousness and cutting edge nature education in all the land. The timeline for this project has been another penny-pinching affair and has been a story passed around and told for many years already pre-COVID, with the date of creation pushed even further and further away each time the story is told. It might be ready around 2032 at this point but we shall see.
Really wherever Trees Atlanta is, that neighborhood will be gentrified. Trees Atlanta is the first trumpet blast of gentrification in the city of Atlanta while at the same time their idealistic field staff become impoverished. It's a gross reality. How absurd that instead of treating staff who literally destroy their bodies and their youth and their time for this organization never see a return. Management assure staff that one day when they are older they might be able to work at the big Trees Atlanta complex and get paid the same! WOW GUESS I'LL STICK AROUND FOR 20 MORE YEARS GOTTA SEE THAT!
With the COVID pandemic ever spiraling, Trees Atlanta management should take the time to reflect and press restart and start helping their own people for ONCE.
This place was not always this way I have been told by some folks still hanging on.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND NOT THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY!
FACADE FEUDALISM 101