Grindr Forces Workers to Relocate Just After They Unionize

Grindr has issued a return-to-the-office policy for all workers, forcing them to relocate to one of the company’s three main offices by October 3rd or lose their jobs. Employees say this is a retaliatory move, since it comes two weeks after they announced their plan to form a union.

According to Vice, who obtained the certification form that was sent to workers, the policy states that employees must move to within 50 miles of their newly designated office or they will lose their jobs.

Workers were given the choice to move to either Chicago (for the engineering team), and Los Angeles or San Francisco (for the product and design teams), and if they were not willing to relocate, their jobs would end August 31st. Workers were offered six months’ severance pay and healthcare benefits if they lost their jobs, according to the memo issued by the company.

They were also required to complete and return the certification form by August 17th, stating that they would relocate, only two weeks after this policy was first announced.

“Any team member who does not complete and return this form by August 17, 2023 will be considered not to have agreed to comply with Grindr’s hybrid work policy and RTO plan and/or to have declined to relocate, (if applicable),” the form reads, according to Vice.

The new policy was first announced at an all-staff meeting, and according to what the workers told Vice, it was the first time they’d heard from management since they’d announced the unionization effort with CWA (Communication Workers of America).

“We announced our union on July 20 and then we heard literally nothing from Grindr management until Thursday [August 3rd], when they announced that we all had two weeks to decide whether we were going to move across the country or get fired,” Quinn McGee, a trust and safety product manager and organizer at Grindr United CWA, told Vice.

According to McGee, the management refused to answer any questions about the new policy at the meeting.

“As soon as George [Arison, Grindr’s CEO] stopped talking, one of my colleagues began to ask a question about all of us suddenly having to uproot our lives—and they cut the call,” said McGee.

She also noted that the plan seemed to be last-minute, as the company has not shared the address of the new San Francisco office and it currently has no lease. Instead, Grindr seems to have rented a WeWork space. “So where do they expect us to be working?” she told Vice.

In response to the company’s new policy, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Grindr for retaliating against employees seeking to form the union, according to The Advocate.