The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is accusing Grindr of using a return-to-office (RTO) mandate as an attempt to block employee efforts to form a union.
On July 20, 2023, employees at the LGBTQ+ dating app announced plans to unionize. On August 3, 2023, Grindr told employees that they had two weeks to decide if they would start working in an office location two days per week or exit Grindr with six months of severance, per The New York Times, which reported that it saw the memo. Grindr also reportedly offered up to $15,000 for relocation expenses to its offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, DC. Before the RTO mandate, Grindr allowed fully remote work.
Despite the announcement's timing, Grindr said in August 2023 that it had been working on an RTO mandate for months and that employees were notified of this in early summer 2023, per the NYT. On August 4, 2023, the Communications Workers of America Union, which Grindr employees were working to join, filed a complaint with the NLRB.
Most workers attempting to unionize quit after RTO mandate
About 80 of the 120 workers who were trying to unionize left due to the RTO mandate, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Grindr was said to have 178 employees when it announced the mandate, meaning it lost about 45 percent of employees overall.
In August 2023, a Grindr spokesperson told The Times that Grindr's RTO plans were unrelated to union efforts and claimed that Grindr executives "respect and support our team members’ rights to make their own decision about union representation."
In a September 2023 statement, Eric Cortez, a member of the group organizing the Grindr union, said regarding the employee departures: “These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security, and stability of the app for users."
NLRB files complaint against Grindr
The NLRB’s general counsel office followed up on Friday with a complaint against Grindr, saying that the RTO mandate was issued illegally in retaliation for workers unionizing, Bloomberg reported Monday. The NLRB is also accusing Grindr of breaking the law by not recognizing or negotiating with the union.
Moving forward, a settlement could be reached; if not, an administrative law judge is expected to step in in March. The NLRB would be unable to force the company to pay punitive damages, but Grindr’s RTO policy could be reversed, per the publication.
In a statement, a Grindr spokesperson called the NLRB’s claims “meritless."
“It was only after it was known that the transition back to in-office work was underway that some employees began signing union cards,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement issued on Monday, Grindr United-Communications Workers of America called NLRB’s complaint a “huge victory,” adding: “We hope this NLRB filing sends a clear message to Grindr that, with a union, we are committed to negotiating fair working conditions in good faith.”
RTO mandates driving away employees
With many workers having become accustomed to and, at times, successful with remote work, RTO policies following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions have become a source of contention at some companies.
Grindr has never stated outright that it hoped to lose employees over its RTO policy. However, CEO George Arison didn’t assuage suspicion of that tactic in September 2023 when he said he expected a reduced headcount over the RTO policy. Speaking at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology conference, he said, per Bloomberg: “So that’ll obviously impact margin in a positive way in the near term. But I also think that shows that you can have a lot of leverage in this business because you don’t need that big of a team to do the things that we need to do.”
Grindr is one of many companies to have been accused of using RTO mandates to reduce labor costs without layoffs. A BambooHR survey of 1,504 workers in March concluded that was the driver behind some back-to-office orders.
Other recent studies on RTO have examined the impact of in-office work policies on employee retention. For example, a survey that Great Place to Work released in August of 4,400 US employees ages 18 and older found that workers given the flexibility to work in-office, remotely, or a combination of both are three times more likely to want to stay with their employer. Similarly, a study from University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers that reportedly examined 260 million résumés found that RTO mandates led more people, especially senior-level workers, to resign from Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX.
