Former employees of Rainbow Health, a local health care and social service provider, are demanding answers from the Board of Directors after the organization suddenly closed last week.

After more than 40 years of serving and advocating for the Twin Cities LGBTQ+ community, Rainbow Health informed some 80 employees on Thursday that it would close immediately and union members said Monday that little reasoning has been given since.

“None of us were prepared,” said Ash Tifa, the former legal services program coordinator for Rainbow Health, on Monday.

Workers, 60 of whom are union-represented, received an email Thursday morning about an all-staff meeting where just two hours later they were informed of the closure, according to a news release from Rainbow Health Workers Union, which is represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa.

During the all-staff meeting, Tifa said employees pressed for answers as to why the closure needed to happen that day. The only answer they were given was, “We can’t pay you past today,” Tifa said.

Just days before the announcement of the nonprofits’ closure, CEO Jeremy Hanson Willis resigned following a unanimous vote of no confidence, according to the union.

Leading up to the closure, employees had been calling for accountability and transparency, Tifa said, adding that “a pattern emerged” in regards to the organization’s executives being “unable to answer questions relating to our finances.”

Rainbow Health did not respond to requests for comment as of Monday afternoon, but the organization’s automated phone message said: “Due to insurmountable financial challenges, we can no longer sustain our operations.”

Community impact

Lee Start was meeting with a client during last Thursday’s emergency meeting.

“I learned a few minutes before 1 p.m. that I had until 5 p.m. to terminate services with almost 40 clients,” Start said Monday. “I had a client in the waiting room while staff was in the hall sobbing.”

Start, who worked for Rainbow Health as a psychotherapist since 2019, said the sudden closure is causing trauma to people who are already traumatized.

Rainbow Health’s roots in the Twin Cities date back to 1980 when volunteers launched the Minnesota AIDS Project, which focused on providing a support network and information for gay and bisexual men in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. It eventually grew to include a formalized referral network in the early 2000s and merged with Rainbow Health Initiative in 2018, briefly becoming JustUs Health before being renamed to Rainbow Health in 2021.

“Many of the clients we see, this is the only safe space and support they have,” Start said.

As a result, some of Rainbow Health’s former employees are providing pro-bono services like food and ride assistance to their clients while they sort through next steps, Start said.

Friday, the day after the closure, Tifa hosted a name-change clinic where more than 50 people showed up, said Start.

“There are thousands of people this is impacting and we demand and deserve answers,” they said. “Our clients deserve better than this.”

Next steps

In addition to answers, the union is demanding the employees be paid out PTO and the 30-day notice period they were never given, which Tifa said was stipulated in their contract.

The union is currently trying to reach the board to discuss its demands. The board, which said it would respond on Monday, has yet to reach out, Tifa said early Monday afternoon.

Uzoamaka McLaughlin, a former medical case manager coordinator with Rainbow Health, praised the union on Monday, saying “This platform has given us a voice. If it wasn’t for the union, I don’t know who would be talking on our behalf.”

Rainbow Health Workers voted to form their union in early 2022 due to alleged racial abuse and retaliatory firing practices, McLaughlin said.

According to a 2022 open letter to the community, Rainbow Health staffers wrote that they had witnessed instances of “tokenization and exploitation of Black staff by Rainbow Health leadership,” “potentially/perceived retaliatory employment termination for people who object to Rainbow Health leadership’s treatment of staff” and “hostile shut-down tactics creating a culture of non-transparency and fear amongst staff.”

McLaughlin went on to say the union had had its “best meeting ever” last December where the outgoing board recommended the new board members meet with the union in three months’ time. But the meeting never happened, McLaughlin said, despite repeated requests.

“We don’t even know who to channel our questions to,” McLaughlin said. “Who should take this fall?”

Caleb Hensin contributed to this story. 

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