Legal Aid union authorizes strike as midnight contract deadline approaches

Lawyers at the Legal Aid Society voted on Sunday night to authorize a strike amid heated contract negotiations between Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys-UAW 2325 and Legal Aid management.

The union’s contract is scheduled to expire at midnight Tuesday. Negotiations were expected to continue throughout the day and potentially into the night on Monday as the organization seeks to avoid a strike.

Jane Fox, the head of ALAA-UAW 2325, told amNewYork that Legal Aid came to the union with an “extremely disappointing offer” on Friday evening. The union and Legal Aid have been in active negotiations since March, Fox said, and the 11th-hour offer “doesn’t keep up with inflation or the cost of living.”

The Sunday night vote saw 99% participation from union membership, with 91% of members voting to authorize the strike. Though the authorization does not automatically begin a strike, it allows the union to trigger a strike if it determines that management has failed to produce a fair offer.

Legal Aid strike could grind courts to a halt

If the union, which represents 2,000 lawyers total and 1,100 who work at the Legal Aid Society, authorizes a strike, it could bring much of the city’s criminal defense legal work to a standstill. Contracts will expire at midnight for several other chapters of the union, six of which have voted to authorize a strike, including the Legal Aid chapter.

“If they don’t put more money on the table, our union will authorize a strike and shut down the city’s courts,” Fox said.

The Legal Aid Society provides free legal services to qualifying low-income New Yorkers in need of legal representation. Legal Aid is primarily funded by the New York City government, which Fox said has been hesitant to offer more funding to the organization.

In a statement released Monday morning, Legal Aid Attorney-in-Chief and CEO Twyla Carter said Legal Aid leaders “respect ALAA’s decision to authorize a strike and will continue to bargain in good faith.”

“We remain committed to reaching a fair and fiscally responsible agreement with ALAA that honors our shared values and secures the future of our constitutionally and legally mandated work, as well as our broader mission to advance justice and equity,” Carter said. “Lastly, if a strike takes place, our top priority will be to continue the high-quality legal services for the people and communities we serve and rely on us without interruption.”

Carter, noting “decades of underfunding” from the government, called on the union to “stand with us in this fight for our shared interests of livable wages, as our dedicated staff attorneys have long foregone far higher salaries in the private sector to serve New Yorkers.”

‘Do the right thing,’ lawyers say

Fox said she and other union leaders were “astonished” by Legal Aid’s response to the strike authorization. To Fox, Legal Aid is not putting adequate pressure on Mayor Eric Adams and other city leadership to increase funding to the society and is instead opting to blame the union for the threat posed by a potential strike.

Fox called on Adams and the city to “do the right thing” and provide Legal Aid with the funding needed to pay its staff attorneys a livable wage that can compete with the rapidly increasing cost of living in New York City.

Fox said the union is willing to stay at the table until midnight, at which point its contract will expire, and the union may go on strike if its demands are not met. In addition to demanding greater pay, the union is demanding that Legal Aid alleviate part of the workload assumed by attorneys—a workload that is exacerbated by lawyers leaving Legal Aid after getting priced out of New York City, Fox said.

Carter acknowledged in her Monday statement that Legal Aid struggles to keep its salaries up with inflation and New York City’s cost of living. The society published its Friday offer, which includes an average 7% salary increase for staff attorneys that have been with Legal Aid for four to 20 years. The society offered tiered salary increases based on experience.

“Legal Aid must make significant sacrifices to formulate the current economic offer to ALAA,” Carter said. “We have invited ALAA to provide feedback on how best to distribute the proposed compensation enhancements to meet the needs of its members, and we hope to continue that discussion during upcoming bargaining sessions.”

Fox noted that the United Auto Workers was the first major union to back Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), the apparent winner of last week’s Democratic primary for mayor, in the race for City Hall.

Should the union go on strike, Fox said, Mamdani “will be out there supporting us on that picket line.” In a Monday afternoon news release, Mamdani affirmed his support for the union.

“These 2,000 ALAA UAW 2325 workers are the last line of defense for New York City from Trump, so much so that I hosted a press conference about Trump-proofing the city at their local union office,” Mamdani said in the release. “They keep our most vulnerable New Yorkers protected in our courts. Mayor Adams has the ability to avert a strike here and the courts being shut down by paying these workers what they deserve. If he doesn’t, I will proudly stand with these brave workers on day one of their strike on the picket line.”

A spokesperson from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

“Our employers need to provide our members with a livable wage floor, annual wage increases that prevent attrition, and workloads that allow for the best quality of representation for our clients,” said Lisa Ohta, President of the ALAA, in the news release. “Our members fight every day for New Yorkers, and this campaign is as much a fight to improve our working conditions as it is to guarantee justice for our clients. If our employers refuse to meet our demands, we are prepared to strike to get the wages we need to stay in the jobs we love.”