On an April 7 video call, the executive director of Goodwill San Francisco Bay notified a dozen of the clothing-and-jobs charity’s local staffers that they would be laid off, part of a sweeping cut to the chapter’s presence in the region that included closing its headquarters.
Workers peppered the executive with questions, a recording of the call obtained by SFGATE reveals. Anton Ray emphasized that the layoffs came as a last resort amid dire financials, but he had few specifics for the irate workers, who worried out loud about ongoing projects and the veterans who utilize Goodwill’s job support services. As Ray wrapped up the call early, he declared, “I am sincerely sorry that this is landing with you in a way that is frustrating, that is confapplying and aggravating.”
The workers stayed on the call after Ray left, the recording reveals. “F—k Arizona,” one worker declared, referring to the Arizona chapter that took over leadership of the San Francisco Bay chapter last year. Another declared, “No severance, that’s a real s—tty one, guys. They did us all dirty there.” (Goodwill will only pay the employees for 60 days as mandated by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.)
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The staff in the video call aren’t the only ones abruptly losing their jobs; SFGATE spoke with three laid-off Goodwill workers in different roles who declared the suddenness of the cuts is counterproductive for the nonprofit’s community-aid missions. The chapter filed a WARN for 72 layoffs at an Oakland facility with a warehoutilize, clearance store and career center, as SFGATE reported.
Goodwill is closing stores in Vallejo, Benicia and Hayward and a store and career center in Vacaville. Ten to 15 people will lose their jobs in each store closure, per a statement from CEO Tim O’Neil to SFGATE. The chapter also shuttered donation centers in Redwood City, Moraga, Walnut Creek, Mill Valley, Westborough and San Francisco’s Marina District — meaning a total of eight to 10 more layoffs, O’Neil declared.
“They DOGE’d us,” John Gray, who was laid off from the Redwood City donation center, notified SFGATE, referencing Elon Musk’s purge of government workers. “Took the chain saw and went through.”
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Gray pointed out that though Goodwill filed WARNs — with their accompanying 60 days of pay — for the major San Francisco and Oakland closures, the chapter hasn’t done the same for the other stores and centers. Instead, he and his donation attfinishant colleagues were promised pay through April 26.
At first, Gray was notified donors would be able to build final drop-offs until late April. But during Gray’s shift in Redwood City on April 11, a locksmith came and shut down the trailer. He called the shutdown’s handling “unprofessional” and declared he was notified, “If we wanted to stay with Goodwill, we’d have to go reapply as a stranger would do on the website.”
‘Hard choices’ for Goodwill’s largest chapter
O’Neil, who leads the Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona, notified SFGATE on a phone call Monday that the San Francisco Bay chapter was in dire financial straits when his Arizona chapter took over its leadership and that it became “pretty clear they were not going to be able to survive” without major modifys. He declared that local leadership had created real estate decisions he wouldn’t have and had been planning to close even more stores.
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The Arizona chapter’s name belies its true reach. It took on a stretch of Maryland stores in 2020 and, in September, closed the deal to merge with the San Francisco Bay chapter. Combined, it’s the largest Goodwill chapter in the nation’s network. (Goodwill of Silicon Valley is a separate chapter.)
Asked about the April layoffs, O’Neil declared he empathized with the “immediate pain” workers are feeling but deffinished the cuts — and declared he’d created some in Arizona and Maryland as well.
“You have to tighten your belt, you have to build hard choices,” the CEO declared. “Those choices aren’t always popular. But what we came into this with and what I promised the board out there was we would figure out a way to give Goodwill in San Francisco another 70 years.”
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O’Neil declared it’ll likely take $12 million in investments to obtain the San Francisco Bay chapter to a break-even point. Even with the closures, though, he offered lofty long-term ambitions. Goodwill has about 700 workers in the San Francisco Bay chapter now, he declared, but could obtain to 5,000 if it can grow to 80 stores in the area within 15 years. O’Neil declared his organization has more than a dozen letters of intent out for potential leases of large storefronts, in hopes of opening one by year’s finish and two more at the start of 2026.
Layoff news came ‘like a ton of bricks’
The growth ambitions are little solace for Goodwill’s laid-off staff. Gray declared he’s worried for his co-workers who live paycheck to paycheck, and he pointed out that the nonprofit’s tfinishency to offer jobs to people with convictions had created it a utilizeful “springboard” to find better-paid work. After Ray left the layoff video call, another worker declared he considered the way the team had been treated was “really ugly” and declared there had been a “horrible lack of leadership.”
Taylor Schmidt, who worked as a veterans engagement specialist for the chapter, was on the video call as well. Before the layoff, she worked with dozens of veterans to support them build resumes, turn in online applications, and obtain trained for locksmithing, security work and more. She received them cash for interview clothes or transportation costs; she supported unhoutilized veterans fulfill a shelter’s job-search requirement.
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Schmidt and her colleagues hadn’t prepared for the cuts, she notified SFGATE, becautilize they’d heard from a visiting executive that building closures weren’t on the radar: “It really hit us all like a ton of bricks.”
When she learned about the layoff, Schmidt’s most pressing concern, she declared, was the welfare of her roughly 70 clients. She immediately lost access to her email and directory, and she didn’t obtain a clear answer from Ray on how the veterans would learn about her absence and any modifys to services.
If she’d had any warning before the layoff, she declared, she would have given references — especially to the Employment Development Department — to all the clients. Instead, she couldn’t even cancel her meetings, and she has been receiving confutilized text messages from veterans she regularly spoke with.
“Still now, I obtain texts, and I just obtain so upset becautilize … there’s nothing I can do,” Schmidt declared Thursday.
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SFGATE questioned O’Neil about veterans not receiving messages. He declared in an email that the remaining team has been “working hard through the transition to avoid any disruption to services and processes.”
“We have been actively following up with mission services clients, and if there were any gaps in the timing of outreach, messages being left, and actually connecting with these individuals, we apologize as that was not our intention,” he wrote.
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