Last month the Sierra Club announced their executive director, Ben Jealous, was on leave. Then yesterday the board decided to fire him saying the decision came after an investigation. A statement from the group also suggested an investigation might continue even after his departure.
“Following an extensive evaluation of his conduct, the Board of Directors unanimously voted to terminate Ben Jealous’ employment for cause. This was not a decision we took lightly,” the email said.
Jonathon Berman, chief communications officer for the organization, confirmed Jealous’ exit to Inside Climate News.
“The Sierra Club values all of its employees, members, and volunteers, not just those holding influence and power,” Berman wrote in an email. “The Sierra Club will continue to look into concerns raised regarding misconduct irrespective of who they are raised against in furtherance of our policies, the law, and our mission.”
Misconduct? So what exactly did Jealous do? At the moment no one is saying, but the story notes his contract only allows him to be fired for a few specific reasons. Which one of these things was Jealous guilty of? Some of these issues seem like they would be crimes or at least grounds for lawsuits.
An Inside Climate News review of Jealous’ employment contract provided only limited reasons he could be terminated for cause, including “an act of gross negligence, dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, or any act of malfeasance of moral turpitude by Executive that is substantially harmful to the mission, interests, or reputation of Sierra Club; Executive’s willful failure or refusal to perform his duties or his material breach of this Agreement; Executive’s conviction of (or plea of no contest with respect to) a felony or other crime that substantially harms the mission, interests, or reputation of Sierra Club; or a severe violation of Sierra Club’s [equal opportunity] policy.”
The union applauded his departure.
In a statement, Erica Dodt, president of the Progressive Workers Union, which represents Sierra Club employees, said, “We hope that his departure will open the door for a stronger relationship between workers and management, and allow the Sierra Club to better focus our efforts on fighting the Trump administration and protecting the environment.”
Meanwhile, Jealous suggested he would fight this out and try to get his job back.
In a statement, Mr. Jealous said he was proud of his tenure at the Sierra Club and that he would contest the move to fire him. “It is disheartening, unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising that the board has chosen an adversarial course that the facts so clearly cannot support,” he said. “I have begun the process under my contract to fight this decision. I am confident that we will prevail.”
I really don't know what happened here but I do know that people at Sierra seemed to dislike Jealous almost as soon as he took the role back in 2023. He started the job promising a new focus on equity.
“We have to deal with all of the equity issues inside the Sierra Club,” he said in January. “Those include, absolutely, issues of gender, as well as racial equity and also pay equity.”
You may notice that none of those things really have much of anything to do with the actual purpose of the Sierra Club, which is to advocate for environmental causes. Shockingly, the focus on equity issues did not lead to a group of happy employees singing Kumbaya but to a bunch of really unhappy employees.
...today, the 131-year-old group is in turmoil over its approach to diversity, equity and environmental justice, according to interviews with 12 current and former staffers, most of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of facing retaliation or otherwise harming their job prospects...
The discord at the Sierra Club intensified in April and May, when the group’s new leadership laid off more than two dozen employees, many of whom were people of color, as part of what Jealous has called a broader “restructuring.” According to the Progressive Workers Union, which represented roughly 400 Sierra Club staffers before the layoffs, more than 30 of its members lost their jobs.
And here's the really curious part:
The leadership laid off the entire staff of the equity team, which was tasked with improving the workplace culture around diversity and inclusion, and several members of the environmental justice division, which had fought to block polluting projects in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. Jealous also shortened the name of the People, Culture and Equity Department — which includes the equity team and the human resources team — to the People Department and hired a vocal critic of its past work from outside the organization to lead it.
So the guy who came in saying he wanted to focus on equity immediately took a hatchet to the equity team? There has to be more to this story. At the time, Jealous said the issue was purely one of finances. The Sierra Club was in a hole and cuts needed to be made.
“When I took over at Sierra Club, no one had advertised that I would be inheriting a budget with a $40 million deficit,” he said. “That was news to me walking through the door.”
However, some employees said this accounting was incomplete. They pointed to Jealous’s personal expenses, including the renovation of the group’s D.C. location to create his own soundproof office.
I don't know what the boss' officer renovation cost but it wasn't $40 million. That sounds like sour grapes from the union guys looking to trash Jealous for firing their friends.
There's really no one to root for in this story. It sounds like Jealous did more than renovate his office and it also sounds like the staff/union at Sierra is full of woke crybabies who would be calling Jealous a racist if he weren't black and the former head of the NAACP.