Hundreds of public defenders and social workers in Brooklyn and Queens have gone on strike, with the possibility of more walkouts to come as legal aid providers continue to negotiate with their unions.
The union representing staff attorneys from Brooklyn Defender Services who walked off the job Thursday said in a social media post Friday morning that many of its members worked through the night to try to mitigate the disruption to clients. (iStock.com/SandraMatic)
Staff attorneys from Brooklyn Defender Services walked off the job Thursday after failing to reach a collective bargaining agreement with their managers by the 8 a.m. deadline the union
set last week. In an
Instagram post Friday morning, the union said that many of its members worked through the night to try to mitigate the disruption the strike would cause clients.
"In the early hours of July 16, management locked members out of our email accounts and replaced individualized [out-of-office] messages with the following generic message: 'I am not working today,'" it added.
The Brooklyn Defender Services union represents about 500 staffers in both Brooklyn and Queens. The organization assumed the criminal defense contract of the Queens Defenders last year when its executive director, Lori Zeno, was arrested and charged with embezzling from the organization. Zeno pled guilty in February in Brooklyn federal court.
More legal aid providers, including both attorneys and social workers, could also walk off the job in the coming weeks. The Brooklyn Defender Services union is one of five represented by the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, or ALAA — a
United Auto Workers affiliate that represents more than 3,500 legal services workers in the New York City metro area — whose contracts expired at the end of last month.
Two of the others, the Bronx Defenders union and the Neighborhood Defender Services union, have
voted to authorize strikes, but have not set deadlines.
The Brooklyn Defender Services' executive director, Lisa Schreibersdorf, told Law360 last week that management is "proud of the strong financial offer we made to the union this week, which reflects the value of the incredible representation our staff provides every day."
"We are working diligently to address other critical issues that impact the staff's ability to sustain our work, as well as align our workplace culture to the shared goals of professional development and camaraderie, both essential to public defense offices," she added.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.
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