Bronx Defenders Join Growing Legal Services Worker Strike
Attorneys with three publicly funded legal services providers for low-income New Yorkers went on strike Friday morning after failing to reach an agreement with management on raises.
Staff at the Bronx Defenders, the Center for Appellate Litigation and the Office of the Appellate Defender join the roughly 400 attorneys and legal staff across four other nonprofit organizations already on the picket line seeking better pay and working conditions, bringing the total number of strikers to more than 700.
They are represented by the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys – UAW Local 2325, which along with its parent union, the United Auto Workers, represents a majority of legal services workers in New York City representing defendants in immigration, criminal, housing and family courts.
The work stoppage at Bronx Defenders has the potential to “shut down” arraignments and intake in Bronx criminal, housing and family courts, said Sophia Gurulé, an ALAA Local 2325 trustee who formerly worked at the organization.
It’s the first strike ever by workers at that organization, and the first by attorneys representing indigent criminal defendants anywhere in the city since 1994, when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani cancelled the city’s contract with the Legal Aid Society and new organizations formed to provide the services — including Bronx Defenders.
The main sticking point, according to Gurulé, is that management is refusing to meet the union’s demand of a $68,500 salary floor for non-attorney staff, including paralegals, interpreters and administrative assistants.
“People give their all to this work, whether it’s in family defense or criminal defense. And the fact that people can’t get a living salary needs to stop,” said Gurulé. “The only way to stop it is with organized people.”
In a statement, Bronx Defenders executive director Juval O. Scott said management’s latest offer lifts the salaries of the lowest-paid staff by 11.4% and met the union’s salary demands for those with nine or more years of experience.
“But the union’s latest counterproposal requires an additional $600,000 that we just don’t have without additional City funding,” wrote Scott. “With valid concerns around workload and maintaining the highest quality services for the people we represent, we cannot responsibly offer more.”
The union’s bargaining committee informed its members of the strike in a notice posted to its WhatsApp channel Thursday afternoon after it walked out of negotiations with management.
A spokesperson for Bronx Defenders said non-union managers and supervisors will handle case loads during the strike.
The attorneys bargain directly with their private employers, but the city has a unique stake in the negotiations, because it provides funding to the legal services organizations. Bronx Defenders currently has nearly $197 million in city legal services contracts, according to the city comptroller’s Checkbook NYC database.
“We implore the union and the City, both, to support us in seeking a swift resolution,” said Scott, Bronx Defenders’ executive director.
Deanna Logan, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said in a statement that despite not being a party to the negotiations, the city has taken steps to mitigate the effects of the strike.
“We are specifically mitigating potential disruptions by working with our partners to get supervisors and directors to pick up cases, calling on our deep bench of private attorneys to assist, and working closely with criminal and family courts to ensure that nobody is left without representation,” said Logan.
Legal workers at CAMBA, New York Legal Assistance Group, Goddard-Riverside Law Project and Urban Justice Center went on strike earlier this month.
Other ALAA shops were able to avert a strike on Friday. Attorneys at Appellate Advocates reached a tentative agreement on Thursday evening, and unionized staff at the Legal Aid Society — the ALAA’s largest chapter at roughly 1,100 members — agreed to extend their strike deadline to July 25 after bargaining through the night until early Friday.
Though the specific demands vary among the organizations, they generally seek raises, higher salary minimums for attorneys and other staff, and more affordable health care premiums. Some are also seeking a reduced case load cap per attorney to combat burnout and high turnover.
Some of the organizations have told staff that they cannot meet the union’s pay demands because of budget constraints, even with funds included in the latest municipal budget deal reached by the City Council and the Adams administration that doubled spending for immigration legal services and included funding totaling $30 million for housing and criminal defense.
The Trump federal spending bill — which allocates an unprecedented $170 billion for immigration enforcement and slashes funding the city relies on for housing, health care and other services — threatens to intensify the need for legal representation while shrinking city government resources.
The ALAA has called on management to join in its demands of additional $25 to $30 million funding from the Adams administration for legal services for the next year.
“We don’t want to have to go on strike to do this. We think it’s a no brainer. It’s pennies for the city, it’s pennies for [management],” said Gurulé. “Why don’t they get their own salaries in order? Why don’t they make cuts on their end? Why not prioritize that?”
Related
link
