Recently unionized employees at Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit Chicago health clinic that caters particularly to LGBTQ people, plan to strike tomorrow. Management is also threatening to lay off 15 percent of their workforce, citing “financial concerns.”

On December 30, the sixty employees — who had previously been told they would be laid off tomorrow — arrived at work to discover that they had been locked out of their emails and other work software, including at least one therapist who says that they lost access during a call with a patient. The workers were given no advance notice that this would happen, according to the union. A photo of the email from a manager informing the workers of their impending layoff circulated on social media and showed that he didn’t personalize the message, so each email addressed a given employee as “NAME.”

The proposed layoffs came during negotiations for the workers’ first contract since unionizing with the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) last August. During the first bargaining session in late November, management suggested a “voluntary separation” for 20 percent of its 450 employees — including those who provide PrEP medication (meant to prevent HIV)and support to queer survivors of sexual assault, some of whom are also on the bargaining committee — with one week of severance pay and just over a month of health care. Management said that the cuts “wouldn’t stop essential services,” according to INA organizer Margo Gislain.