Legal Aid Society union calls off strike after reaching tentative labor agreement
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the legal aid society and its attorney union reached a tentative labor agreement on wednesday, putting to an end the threat of a mass public defender strike. Eagle file photo by NOah Powelson
By Noah Powelson and Jacob Kaye
The Legal Aid Society reached a tentative labor agreement with its attorneys’ union Wednesday afternoon, likely ending the threat of what would have been the largest public defender strike the city has seen in three decades.
The tentative agreement comes several days before the previously scheduled strike deadline was set to hit and as legal services union shops across the city have taken to the picket lines. The Legal Aid Society’s chapter of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, UAW 2325 is by far the largest in the city and would have more than doubled the size of the strike had their 1,100 members walked off the job. Such a strike would have likely caused major disruptions across the city’s courts.
The full scope of the agreement is unclear, but sources familiar with the deal told the Eagle attorneys and non-attorney staff union members will likely vote on the agreement next week.
But even with the agreement, tensions appear to remain between the union, the Legal Aid Society and the city, which controls a bulk of the funds legal services providers use to pay their staff. Working into the tentative three-year agreement is the option for the union to reopen salary negotiations next summer.
“After hundreds of hours of bargaining, and 30 tentative agreements that raise the industry standards for what it means to work in legal services, we are proud to present this contract to our members to vote on,” Chapter Chair of Legal Aid Society Attorneys United, UAW 2325, Jane Fox said in a statement. “While we are proud of these historic gains on workload protection to increase retention, a first of its kind student loan fund, 20 weeks parental leave, retiree health benefits and more, we were fundamentally left behind by Mayor Adams and our employers on salaries and pensions.”
“Our members will vote on this contract next week, but regardless if they vote it up or down, we won a reopener guaranteeing no matter what, we will be back to win the salaries and pensions we deserve next year,” Fox added.
In a statement, Twyla Carter, the attorney-in-chief and CEO of the Legal Aid Society, celebrated the agreement but expressed dissatisfaction with the funds allocated to them by New York City and State.
“Across the five boroughs, staff attorneys — alongside our entire team at Legal Aid — devote themselves each day to delivering vital legal services to vulnerable New Yorkers,” Carter said. “But for too long, their pay has not reflected the complexity or importance of their work — the result of decades of underfunding by state and city government.”
“While today’s development represents meaningful progress, we know that ensuring fair compensation and lasting support for our mission will require sustained investment from both Albany and City Hall,” she added. “We look forward to partnering with ALAA as a united front in the fight to secure the resources that both honor the vital contributions of our staff attorneys and support the long-term sustainability of a career at Legal Aid.”
For months, union representatives at the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys – the union that represents public defenders at nearly two dozen legal services organizations across the city – have threatened to have thousands of legal aid attorneys and staffers stop working if new labor contracts with nine different shops weren’t agreed upon.
Negotiations between the Legal Aid Society and their union began in March of 2025, but showed no signs of progress as their contract eventually expired in July. Provisions in the work contract prevented union members from striking immediately after it expired, but they set a strike deadline for July 25 as negotiations continued.
Following the tentative agreement reached Wednesday, the strike deadline has been called off, sources said.
The agreement comes as unions for the other two largest striking legal aid organizations, the Bronx Defenders and the New York Legal Assistance Group, reached their own tentative contract agreements with management earlier this week. Ratification votes for those contracts are expected to be held next week.
But while staff at the Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders and NYLAG internally discuss and debate the terms of the agreements before them, hundreds of other attorneys remain on the picket line.
Wednesday, tentative agreements had not yet been made between the Office of the Appellate Defender, Center for Appellate Litigation, the Urban Justice Center and the Goddard Riverside Law Project and their unions. Roughly 200 union members remain on strike.
Demands for the unions included raises, cost-of-living adjustments, cheaper health care premiums, higher wage floors for non-attorney staff and a myriad of other concerns that union members said were necessary for attorneys to afford to stay in the city and help the most vulnerable residents.
At CAMBA, a non-profit that offers low-income New Yorkers free civil legal services to housing, foreclosure, immigration and consumer law, roughly 50 union members have been striking for a little over a week. Union representatives at CAMBA have said their employers have consistently refused demands for a higher wage floor and cost-of-living-adjustments comparable to other organizations.
"Every day we spend out on the picket is another day our clients don’t get the representation they deserve due to management's greed, and their inability to engage with our demands surrounding a living wage, COLA, and parental and disability benefits,” Catríona Fox,
CLSWU union delegate and bargaining committee member, said in a statement. “It’s clear management doesn’t care about our clients, only contracts, and the work again falls on us to advocate for ourselves and our clients at the same time. Shame to management, solidarity to my union siblings."
