Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has unveiled sweeping new guidelines to combat sexual misconduct and discrimination among his campaign team. The move comes after months of talks with former staffers who felt mistreated during the senator’s 2016 White House bid.
The 17-page document, a copy of which was seen by the Guardian, is the result of an effort to reckon with a culture Sanders has acknowledged was “too white” and “too male”. It draws on the experiences of former staffers as well as research and industry best practices to compile what the authors hope will serve as a “blueprint” for other candidates and campaigns.
Part diagnosis and part prescription, the document lays out “guiding principles” as well as policies and “key learnings from inside and outside political campaign work – and from conversations with former staff who have shared often painful personal experiences and ideas to keep them from happening again”.
It addresses issues including a lack of diversity among staff and leadership, pay disparity and sexual misconduct.
“While campaigns may be temporary,” the document states, “the choices candidates make about their workplace and their staff can have a lasting impact on careers and reputations.”
The Sanders campaign partnered with Working Ideal and Redwood Enterprise, consulting firms that specialize in workplace inclusion and diversity to inform the document.
“How do organizations align the values they espouse with their actual workplace practices?” said Rene Redwood, chief executive of Redwood Enterprise.
She added: “We take a more holistic and comprehensive approach to workplaces. We don’t start with sexual harassment, because that is often a symptom of an organization’s culture and their workplace climate.”
In the first presidential election of the #MeToo era, campaigns are grappling with a changing cultural climate. Sanders is not the only candidate to confront questions of impropriety and misconduct. Aides to several campaigns have said they are prioritizing policies to prevent harassment and misconduct.
Work on the blueprint released on Tuesday began in January, when Sanders met two dozen former employees who said they experienced sexual harassment and gender discrimination while working on his 2016 campaign. In a letter, the staffers requested an opportunity to “pre-empt the possibility of replicating the predatory culture from the first presidential campaign”.
Sanders has apologized publicly and privately to staffers who felt mistreated and thanked them for speaking out.
“Clearly we need a cultural revolution in this country to change workplace attitudes and behavior,” the Vermont senator said in a statement, following media reports of sexism and harassment on his campaign. “I intend in every way to be actively involved in that process.”
Sanders has said his 2020 campaign has implemented policies that represent the “gold-standard for what we should be doing”. These include mandatory training, an independent hotline to report sexual harassment and a fixed pay scale. In March, Sanders 2020 staff voted to unionize, a first for a major party campaign.
His campaign has also touted its diversity. On a call last month, campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the first Muslim to lead a major US presidential operation, said the team was roughly 40% people of color and women were in the majority.
“It was important to the senator that we have a campaign that reflects America and that it’s a [campaign] that lives our values,” Shakir said.
The campaign has hired Rikimah Glymph as chief of people and state operations, to oversee the wellbeing of staff.
“We’re trying to change the framework. Instead of calling it HR we’re calling it people operations,” said Glymph, who has spent more than a decade working in human resources. “Really what we care about are that folks are fuel to be able to execute on that mission and that they are healthy and happy in doing it.”
Glymph is working to implement free counseling for staff and other benefits such as commuter transit and flexible spending accounts. Not all campaigns will have the resources to hire a dedicated HR team like the one Glymph is leading, she said, but she added that many of the ideas could be implemented by small operations.
The document will be published on the campaign website. Surrogates, contractors and non-staff personnel who engage with the campaign will be given its sexual harassment policy to read and sign.
“We’ve seen campaigns innovate on data, on social media and on small-dollar fundraising – all these things that we now take for granted but at the time were really new and different from how it had ever been done before,” said Pam Coukos of Working Ideal, which helped to shape the document.
“Let’s make this the way campaigns innovate this cycle, which is to say that this time can be really different than the way we’ve done it before and it will make us better.”