Anti-union stance has deep roots for head of Queens public defender group
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Queens Defenders Executive Director Lori Zeno has opposed her employees’ effort to unionize Attorneys and social workers cast their votes in a union election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board on Feb. 16. AP Photo/Kevin Hagen
By David Brand
For the past two months, lawyers and social workers attempting to unionize the indigent defense group Queens Defenders have run into resistance from their boss, an administrator who says her opposition has its roots in the very origins of the organization.
Queens Defenders Executive Director Lori Zeno’s union opposition has spurred condemnation from employees and pressure from local elected officials — particularly after she and management fired two staffers who supported joining the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys earlier this month.
But Zeno says she’s not anti-union, she’s anti-this particular union.
She said she believes the ALAA has close ties to management at the Legal Aid Society, the organization she broke away from in the mid-1990s, and could sink Queens Defenders in contract negotiations with the city.
“The Legal Aid union, are you kidding me? You have to pick the Legal Aid union. They’re our competition, they’re the reason we even exist,” she told the Eagle. “DC-37, 32BJ, 1199. It would have been a different story, but they came in with the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys union.”
The indigent defense group, formerly known as Queens Law Associates, was one of a handful of legal organizations that formed in the mid-1990s after then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued contracts to new non-union public defender agencies following a 1994 strike by Legal Aid lawyers.
Zeno said she feared reprisal from a future anti-union mayor like Giuliani and said her organization could miss out on city contracts if staff at Legal Aid and Queens Defenders belong to the same union.
She said she also suspects that Legal Aid will try to exploit the new arrangement.
“This goes back 25 years in history about what the consequences could be for my office with the city given that we are joining the Legal Aid union,” Zeno said.
“We have an RFP and the moment you unionize, of course Legal Aid will go back to the city and say, ‘Queens Defenders is part of us anyway. We’re all the same, and when putting out the RFP you don’t need Queens Defenders anymore. You can give us 100 percent of the work and they don’t need any,’” she continued.
In addition to Legal Aid, staff at two other public defender organizations — Bronx Defenders and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem — have joined The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys Local 2325. Bronx Defenders Services formed in the wake of Guiliani’s anti-union reprisal.
Zeno, however, said she remains convinced that the ALAA looks out for the interests of Legal Aid management.
“They are definitely the Legal Aid Society period. It has always been the Legal Aid Society since 30 years ago when I worked there,” Zeno said.
ALAA organizer Alexi Shalom said Zeno has deep misconceptions about the union.
“The union, under the US code definition, has to be separated from management,” Shalom said.
“Our union not only represents Legal Aid, but proudly represents attorneys at Bronx Defenders, and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, and what we’re interested in is raising the standards of the industry as a whole and of our clients,” he continued. “At this point, the union has more people who don’t work for Legal Aid than who do.”
The head of Legal Aid’s criminal defense practice, Tina Luongo, said the ALAA does not interfere with the agency’s contractual obligations or relationships with New York City’s five additional public defender groups.
“In fact, we enjoy a productive relationship with ALAA working to address staff concerns while also fighting together to make New York a more fair and just city for our clients,” Luongo said.
Staffers represented by the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys rallied in Brooklyn in 2018. The organization is attempting to unionize Queens Defenders. Photo courtesy of ALAA
Administrators at the city’s two other unionized public defender organizations each said they have managed to work well with ALAA staff, as well as the city and state.
Alice Fontier, the managing director of Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said staffers’ decision to unionize “has done nothing to impact our contracts with the city and state, or our ability to continue providing excellent legal services.”
Bronx Defenders Executive Director Justine Olderman said the agency voluntarily recognized the ALAA in 2020 “because we believed then, as we do now, that it is by working collaboratively with our staff that we will be able to realize our shared goals.”
The union drive
The National Labor Relations Board oversaw a Queens Defenders staff vote Feb. 16. The results are pending.
The vote came two months after a majority of eligible attorneys and social workers at Queens Defenders signed union cards Dec. 16. At the time, Queens Defenders said they had 90 percent staff support.
Zeno said they excluded up to 15 eligible employees and that she refused to voluntarily recognize the union because she heard from staff members who signed their union cards reluctantly.
The news organization New York Focus reported on Zeno’s attempts to dissuade staffers from unionizing during a lengthy virtual meeting last month.
During an interview with the Eagle, Zeno said she tried to discourage staff for their own professional interests, aside from the potential contracting consequences for the organization. For example, Queens Defenders attorneys can pursue private clients to earn more income, she said.
“Did I tell them that I felt they were in a better position without a union? Yes, I did tell them that,” she said. “There are things that they get in our office that they don’t get in Legal Aid.”
As for the two fired staffers, Zeno and Queens Defenders management maintain that the terminations had nothing to do with union views. Both employees had committed ethical violations and neglecting their responsibilities at work, she said.
And while she said she would have been less resistant to a union other than ALAA, she also opposes the notion of public defenders organizing.
“I am not against unions. Absolutely not against unions. But I will say this: When you’re talking about auto workers at a factory line and somebody’s hand gets stuck in a machine that’s not taken care of properly and they’re on their 16th hour of work and nobody gives a damn, then, yeah, I believe in a union,” she said.
“Do I believe that lawyers who represent indigent people who are in jail charged with crimes, not been convicted yet, do I think that it’s ethical or wise to have a court date come up where your client is coming to court to see a judge and you’re a lawyer and you’re supposed to be there but instead you’re out on a picket line because you want $5 more on your health insurance?”
“I do have a problem with that.”
Shalom, from the ALAA, said the union’s activism has benefited low-income defendants and cited the example of a fight for vertical representation of clients — one public defender representing a defendant from arraignment through trial.
He also compared the ALAA to another type of professional union .
“Teachers unions have undoubtedly improved the quality of the education system in the country,” he said.
In the end, however, Queens Defenders staff either voted to unionize or they didn’t.
The NLRB will soon report the results of the vote and Zeno said she’s ready for either outcome.
“If you vote for a union we will recognize that,” she said. “We will bargain with that and we will do whatever we have to do and we will recognize you as a union.”
