LEGAL SERVICES STAFF ASSOCIATION

National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW Local 2320, AFL-CIO

www.lssa2320.org

Amy
Hammersmith
President

Emily Friedman
Anamaria Segura
Vice Presidents

STRIKE UPDATE
February 5, 2015
On Friday, January 30, 2015, over 90% of MFY Legal Services unionized staff voted to strike.
The vote provided a clear mandate, catalyzed by concerns that management is leading a race to
the bottom with policies that discourage a diverse, experienced staff, to our clients detriment. As
a result, all members have actively participated, standing together at pickets and working behind
the scenes to ensure our members are supported.
Although MFY has used its website to advertise its attractiveness to new attorneys, its
misleading statements about the unions fight for workplace justice are easily debunked.
MFY Hides its Poor Treatment of our Lowest-Paid Workers
MFYs website ignores the key issue that drove the union to strike: equitable treatment of our
lowest-paid workers, our support staff.
MFYs support staff consists of four Latina women who are administrative assistants,
receptionists, translators/interpreters, and process servers for an office of over 70. Despite
MFYs rapid expansion, management has refused to hire additional support staff, instead content
to work ours into the ground. Yet, a strong organizational infrastructure is necessary to ensure
efficient and effective services. National Council of Non-Profits, Investing for Impact: Indirect
Costs Are Essential for Success (Sept. 2013), at 6.
Additionally, the current salary scale does not recognize the increased value of paralegal or
administrative support staffs experience to the organization. These staff members annual raises
represent a lower percentage of their salaries relative to other categories of workers (e.g., social
workers and attorneys). In other words, they receive the smallest piece of the smallest pie; their
wisdom and experience are, literally, less valued.
These imbalances have caused the unionized staff to demand pay equity, so that these workers
experience is rewarded at the same salary percentage as for other categories of workers. We have
also sought a commitment to hire additional staff to ease the overwhelming workload. It was not
until LSSA declared a strike that management began to seriously discuss issues relating to
support staff inequities at the bargaining table.

But the union will not abandon our support staff. The vote to strike was a vote of solidarity.
Its Not an Offer; Its an Insult
During the national financial collapse, unionized staff accepted salaries that fell below the cost of
living in NYC. But as a result of our hard work, MFY thrived during this period, increasing its
reserves and growing in size. In fact, according to MFYs website, its unionized staff has
increased by 26% in the past six months alone.
While publicly trumpeting its success over the last three years, however, MFY claims at the
bargaining table that the annual raises provided over that time were unsustainable. Management
has offered cost-of-living adjustments of 2.25%/2.25%/2% per year .25% less than we
accepted in 2011. Recognizing how much fiscally stronger MFY now is, unionized staff has
sought average raises of 3% per year. This amount is affordable to MFY and enables its staff to
afford living in the city we serve.
At a time of financial strength, MFY is out of excuses.
MFY Can Do Better
Instead of making a fair offer, MFY has mischaracterized its financial state to claim the unions
offer is unsustainable given the funding environment. For example, the website states that
[m]ost of the organizations long-term contracts with the city and state have remained flat for
years, while expenses have consistently gone up. Generously considered, this statement is a
half-truth.

USD (2006)

Adjusted Government Grants

$5,000,000.00
$4,500,000.00
$4,000,000.00
$3,500,000.00
$3,000,000.00
$2,500,000.00
$2,000,000.00

Adj. Gov't Grants

$1,500,000.00
$1,000,000.00
$500,000.00
$2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

While several specific grants may have remained flat, the level of government grant funding as a
whole has increased greatly. (The above graph reflects fiscal year numbers. As a result, the large
amount of grant income received after July 1, 2014 is not reflected.) Similarly, expenses have
2

increased over time, but mainly because MFYs staffing levels have increased over time.
Adjusted for inflation and on a per employee basis, expenses have decreased slightly over the
past three years, while grant funding has increased significantly over that time period.

Expenses and Grants Per Staff Over Time

$120,000.00

USD (2006)

$100,000.00
$80,000.00
Adj. Exp per Staff

$60,000.00

Adj. Gov't Grants/Staff

$40,000.00
$20,000.00
$2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Dont Believe the Hype

In promoting its offer, management misleadingly claims to have offered raises of 9%-23%.
These numbers conflate the steps, which annually compensate workers for their increased
experience, with the cost-of-living adjustment, which annually increases all salaries across the
board in recognition of their decreasing real value. MFY emphasizes how much an attorney who
begins at MFY and remains there for three years stands to benefit. The bulk of this benefit is
compensation for experience, which all reasonable business models reward. An attorney with
three years of experience is more valuable to the organization than a newly admitted attorney
with no experience, and is paid more accordingly. MFY's characterization of its offer is like
taking a high school student's income from a summer job, comparing it to that student's income
out of college and marveling at how the economy has grown in the last five years.
Management claims that the current compensation structure is sufficient to retain experienced
staff, but the organizations attrition rate proves otherwise. In each of the past several years MFY
has lost approximately 14% of its staff. The majority of the outgoing staff are experienced, and
they are typically replaced by recent graduates. This means clients (and newer staff in need of
training) lose out on the benefit of this experience. Our clients deserve better, and so do we.
MFYs Offer of Paid Parental Leave is Tied to Harmful and Unnecessary Givebacks
Paid parental leave incentivizes staff to stay at MFY as they take on family responsibilities and
become seasoned advocates. See Claire Cain Miller, The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental
Leave, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 30, 2015); Susan Wojcicki, Paid Maternity Leave Is Good for Business,

WALL ST. J. (Dec. 16, 2014). Yet, MFY is the only legal services organization of its size that
provides no paid parental leave, forcing employees to cobble together sick and vacation time,
take unpaid leave without health insurance benefits, or forgo the decision to have children until
they find a new employer.
Although management has finally agreed to provide six weeks of paid leave to employees with
one year of tenure, this offer is contingent on harmful and unrelated policy changes. The first is
to eliminate a policy that encourages diversity in hiring by use of targeted advance job postings
to, e.g., affinity bar organizations such as the Puerto Rican Bar Association. Although
management has stated at the bargaining table that it has received no viable candidates from
such postings, unionized staff believes they are essential to developing a staff that reflects the
communities we serve.
The second is to change existing contract language to require prior approval when working from
an alternative location, which means that an employee who does so in an emergency may not be
compensated. Such a policy not only undermines trust and productivity, it worsens the already
overcrowded workspaces in the office, particularly for legal assistants.
The last condition is to prevent employees who take paid parental leave from accruing vacation
and sick time while they are out, as employees who use their time to go on vacation would. As a
result, an employee who takes six weeks of parental leave would lose 3.2 vacation days and two
sick days. This policy amounts to unlawful discrimination based on parental status.
MFY should provide paid parental leave with no strings attached, because they can afford it and
it is the right thing to do.
MFY Shirks its Responsibility to Dedicated Workers
One of MFY's demands is to cap sick day accrual at 20 days. They have argued that our current
accrual policy threaten[s] the financial viability of MFY due to the risk that the organization
will have to pay full salary for an employee who has accrued a large number of sick days and
may not return to work for many, many months, or not at all in the case of a terminal illness.
This position is socially irresponsible.
MFY employees earn 18 sick days per year, and rarely come close to using all of them. The vast
majority of employees simply lose these sick days when they leave MFY resulting in savings
for the organization. Only employees who have dedicated their careers to MFY, and then take
leave due to their own, or an immediate family member's, illness, would be paid out for the sick
days they have earned. Fortunately, these situations occur rarelycertainly not enough to
threaten the viability of an organization as financially stable as MFY. MFY should proudly
support their employees through end-of-life care, not begrudgingly shift this burden to the
government and society at large.

MFYs disregard for its employees well being is evidenced by the fact that management decided
to cut off the staff's health insurance benefits immediately after we voted to strike. This move is
shocking, unnecessary, and indicates that management is more interested in retaliating than in
reaching a settlement. MFY did not stoop so low during the 1991 and 2003 strikes. In fact, most
employers maintain health care benefits during strikes. MFY, an organization that purports to
fight for social justice, has now joined the ranks of such notorious union-busting employers as
Coca Cola. Even Verizon, which cut off workers insurance during their 2011 strike, waited four
weeks to do so.
MFY knows that it has several employees who actively need these benefits for ongoing medical
care. But it chose to play with their health, in an attempt to intimidate them out of fighting for a
just workplace. MFY underestimated our commitment to this fight.
MFY Has Not Bargained in Good Faith
MFY states on its website that it ha[s] been and remain[s] ready and willing to sit down with the
union. But when the unions bargaining team stated that they were prepared to work all night to
settle the contract on January 15th, averting a strike, management walked away from the table
before 5:00 PM without making a counter offer. Then, when our team sought to meet with
managements team immediately after the strike vote, management pushed off negotiations until
the third day of the strike.
Furthermore, no board member has ever appeared at the bargaining table, and Executive Director
Jeanette Zelhof has not attended a bargaining session since the first, held on November 3, 2014.
Their absence has stymied negotiation; since our strike, the management team has ended each
session because they needed to confer with their decision makers.
If Ms. Zelhof wants to settle this contract, she should spend less time smearing the union on
MFYs website and more time at the table negotiating a resolution.
MFYs Strike is Legal
The unionized staff is prepared to let the National Labor Relations Board determine the validity
of the unfair labor practice charge management filed based on our decision to set a deadline for
our strike vote, and continue negotiating after that vote. Unions commonly set strike deadlines in
order to prevent indefinitely working without a contract.
What is less common, and much more clearly illegal, is for management to surveil a union
meeting. Yet Deputy Director Elise Brown admitted to eavesdropping on a union meeting during
the height of bargaining. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge as a result, and we are
confident that the NLRB will adjudicate it fairly.