How Workers Re-Unionized Urban Justice Center
May 29, 2025
By Ben Rosenfield
UJC Bargaining Committee and Executive Board retreat — January, 2025
One year ago, the Urban Justice Center Union (UJCU) existed in name only.
Many UJC workers did not even know that the shop was unionized. The Union had no elected representatives/delegates, so we could not file grievances or properly enforce the contract. We discovered that fewer than 30% of bargaining unit members were dues paying union members, which was made possible by the fact that we are an open shop (versus an agency shop). Our shop was in UAW Local 2320 (NOLSW) at the time, but we received little to no support from the Local. UJC workers first unionized in 2009, but, unfathomably, it took 12 years to bargain our first contract.
As we learned all of this, it became clear that it was going to take a lot of organizing to (re)build the Union. We set out to do just that.
Background: UJC’s ‘Unique Project Structure’
To begin, it is worth briefly explaining UJC’s project structure, as that will help the reader better understand the organizing terrain on which we are operating. UJC currently consists of eight projects (seven of which have bargaining unit members) and admin. Upper management, or UJC Central, is the body/apparatus situated above the projects in the organizational structure. Each project exists more or less autonomously, but, importantly, UJC provides fiscal sponsorship for the projects and holds the 501c3 status.
This structure is how UJC founder Doug Lasdon always envisioned UJC—as an ‘incubator’ for social justice organizations to get on their feet, and then, importantly, leave UJC and go off on their own. Naturally, though, projects don’t unilaterally get to decide when they leave UJC. In our CBA, management retains the right to “spin off or divest projects” as it sees fit. In bargaining, management noted that this structure is what makes UJC unique and allows it to “innovate;” and they are right. For example, if any given project has a particularly high number of active union members, management can simply spin off the project and kick it out of UJC—quite innovative from an anti-union point of view.
Additionally, UJC management has demonstrated remarkable innovation as it relates to wages, boasting some of the lowest wages in the sector. The step 1 wages for a worker in admin or at the Street Vendor Project at UJC, as of FY2025, are $46,968.86. A Law Grad at the Domestic Violence Project makes $63,607.38, while an attorney at step 15 (the highest step on the scale) at the Mental Health Project will make $90,451.18. Because management is so committed to treating each project as a separate organization (while having control over all of them), there are currently 13 different pay scales for only 70 bargaining unit members at UJC (and, because of additional weaknesses with our first CBA, some workers aren’t even on a pay scale at all!).
At UJC, the project’s are structurally siloed from one another, and while increased coordination and collaboration would also benefit our clients, management has been against this, because it would mean that workers would build deeper relationships and connections across projects—exactly what UJC was designed to structurally avoid.
Spring 2024: Getting Started
Safety Net Project (SNP) is currently UJC’s biggest project, comprising roughly half of the bargaining unit members. In the Spring of 2024, a group of workers at SNP began discussing the fact that since UJC hadn’t released any sort of statement in solidarity with Palestine, the Union should do so. We learned, however, that because SNP was only one project at UJC, we couldn’t release a statement as, or on behalf of, the Union. When we set out to figure out who was in the Union and how to work on a statement, we learned that the Union didn’t exist as such; there were no elected representatives or official Union bodies. We needed to create them.
We started contacting our 2320 Union staffer in order to start building the necessary bodies to be a functioning Union. While doing that, and because that process was slow and challenging, we started organizing. We organized an art build and a UJC contingent for May Day 2024. Shortly after that, we organized contingents to join the MFJ picket lines in solidarity with our striking siblings. Being at the MFJ pickets was inspiring, as it felt like a model, or a goal, for a level of shop organization and militancy our Union might achieve one day.
On May 17, 2024, we elected the first UJC-wide eboard. UJCU had entered the workplace.
While this marked an important step and a landmark for the Union, there were seemingly a million more steps that we needed to take to get the Union up and running. First, our largely absent 2320 staffer convened the eboard elections in a rushed manner, without us having had the chance to do any real organizing around it. As a result, the eboard was left with multiple unfilled positions. We did, though, have elected representatives and something to build off of.
As a newly elected eboard, some of our primary tasks/goals including the following; gathering contact information for bargaining unit members in order to be able to communicate with the shop, signing workers up as dues paying members of the Union, starting to hold monthly Union meetings, building relationships and connections across projects, getting eboard members trained in order to be able to enforce the contract and educate members about their rights, familiarizing ourselves with our CBA, and more.
The eboard began meeting weekly in order to be able to stay on top of our collective tasks.
Soon after electing an eboard, shop members started notifying us about upcoming disciplinary meetings and their desire to have union representatives present for those meetings. Unfortunately, we began to learn that multiple workers had had to navigate disciplinary meetings without union representation before the eboard had been elected, and some workers had even been terminated. We knew that one of our immediate core responsibilities was to enforce the contract, uphold worker’s rights, and support them throughout this process.
We looked to our local, 2320, for support, but once again received nothing. We had to figure things out for ourselves, and one manner of doing this was attending ALAA trainings, despite not being ALAA members. UJCU eboard members began serving as union representatives in disciplinary meetings and the Union began filing grievances on behalf of bargaining unit members for contract violations.
At the end of June 2024, UJCU held its first UJC-wide general meeting. Bargaining unit members from all seven projects were present, and just under 50% of all bargaining unit members attended. Many workers met their UJC co-workers for the first time at this meeting. We dedicated a large portion of the meeting to issue identification, and, unsurprisingly, we learned that despite being in different projects and doing different work, we were all experiencing many of the same issues as workers at UJC. The biggest issues included; low wages, excessive workloads, and bad insurance, but workers identified a significant number of other issues as well.
At the meeting we also discussed the fact that our contract was set to expire in almost exactly one year—on July 1, 2025. We informed members about sectoral bargaining, and how, by sheer chance, our contract expiration aligned with that of a dozen other shops in the sector. It was energizing for workers to not only connect with their co-workers and start thinking about building our own Union, but also the fact that we were a part of a much larger citywide sectoral movement.
Summer–Winter 2025: Switching Locals
In the summer of 2024, a new issue emerged that would take on central importance to UJCU’s ability to rebuild our Union and ensure our long-term success; switching locals from 2320 (NOLSW) to 2325 (ALAA). As noted above, we had been having a very difficult and challenging time with our Local and had felt deeply unsupported by it. That said, the idea of switching to another Local was not something we even thought possible at the time. What first put it on our radars, ironically enough, was when the President of 2320 threatened to disaffiliate from the UAW. They organized a Town Hall to discuss this plan, and that is where we connected with workers from other 2320 shops. These workers—from The MFJ Shop, Hell’s Kitchen Organizers, GRLP (Goddard Riverside Law Project)—had not only been having similar experiences regarding Local 2320, but also, importantly, were starting to organize around it.
At UJC we were deeply in favor of switching into ALAA. One reason is that, as noted above, our elected representatives had been attending ALAA trainings, whereas we received no such support from our own Local. In addition to the training, resources, and support we knew we would get from ALAA were we to successfully switch Locals, we were also excited about the prospect of getting more involved in sectoral organizing, and figured it would be easier to do so as a part of ALAA, which was driving the sectoral efforts. Last, we were beginning to prepare to bargain a new contract, and we felt deeply and urgently that we were going to need real support from our Local in order to win the best contract possible (and avoid another 12 year negotiation!).
Despite some concerns that engaging in a cumbersome, bureaucratic process to switch locals would be confusing and demobilizing in the context of our new organizing efforts—we started having conversations in the shop regarding switching Locals only three months after starting to organize—the opposite turned out to be the case. The ‘switching locals’ topic allowed (and required) us to engage deeply with membership regarding the state of our shop and the type of shop we were trying to build, our collective goals, and how switching Locals could be instrumental in that process. After successfully completing the first two required votes in order to be able to switch Locals, we finally completed the process on January 15th, 2025. 75% of the entire bargaining unit came to vote in person, with 100% voting in favor of the switch.
We officially became members of ALAA.
Summer 2024–Winter 2025 Continued: UJCU Power in the Workplace—Taking Action and Deep Organizing
At the same time that the process of switching Locals was underway, we were also continuing to take steps to further organize the shop. Over the course of a couple months, we were able to get over 90% of bargaining unit members signed up as dues paying Union members (up from below 30% at the start). We continued to hold monthly Union meetings, during which we carried out political education and know your rights trainings, reviewed relevant sections of the CBA, and continued to identify workplace issues. We filled all empty spots on the eboard, ensuring that each project had a Steward, in addition to a Union Secretary, Treasurer, Chair, and Vice-Chair. We elected a bargaining committee (BC), and organized a weekend eboard/BC retreat in order to engage with some of the bigger picture strategic and organizing questions that the normal week to week rhythm didn’t allow for. All eboard and BC members completed at least one, if not multiple, ALAA trainings.
The eboard and BC also set out to complete 1 on 1s with as many members of the shop as possible. We knew that it was centrally important to carve out time to really connect with members—particularly longer-term members of the shop and folks who we weren’t necessarily seeing at Union meetings every month—in order to hear about how members felt things were going, and, importantly, learn from their institutional knowledge and past experiences at UJC. Largely as a result of negative experiences with our old Local and the extremely drawn out fight for the first contract, many long-term members did not trust the Union. And we certainly couldn’t blame them. Many—though not all—of the eboard and BC members are relatively newer in the shop, and we knew that it was going to take time, as well as real tangible results, to get people to start believing in UJCU.
The 1 on 1s allowed us to continue to build relationships and slow things down for a second in what was otherwise a whirlwind of Union activity. We received really useful information and feedback from both newer and older members, which helped orient our organizing generally, as well as our priorities for bargaining.
In November 2024, UJCU organized our first workplace action in support of one of the longest tenured UJC workers who was facing discipline. Union members lined the halls leading to the room where the meeting was set to take place. This action was important for several reasons; first, it demonstrated to the worker that she wasn’t alone and that the Union was there to support her; second, it put pressure on management not only in that particular instance, but it also generally put them on notice that the Union had arrived; third, it energized the shop by demonstrating to members that the Union was willing and able to take action.
Winter 2025–Present: Creating a CAT, Bargaining, Contract Campaign
After officially becoming members of ALAA in early Winter 2025, the Local assigned us two staffers to support our shop. Up until this point, we had had to figure everything out for ourselves and did so without any support from our Local. On the positive side, this forced us to be resourceful, to take ownership over every aspect of our Union, and to learn a lot in a short amount of time. On the other hand, it also meant that tasks often took us longer than they would have otherwise, because we lacked institutional knowledge and support. Additionally, we sometimes had to put certain ideas or tasks to the side, because we were preoccupied with something else that we may have otherwise been receiving support for.
Having two ALAA staffers has provided us with crucial institutional support, experience, and knowledge. This, in turn, has increased our overall capacity, allowing us to invest more time and energy into organizing the shop, thinking about campaign development, and more. We have particularly benefited from their support as it relates to bargaining the new contract—their experience has saved us time and energy, which we have been able to spend on additional organizing, which is central to the contract campaign.
A contract represents a barometer, or a crystallization, of the level of struggle between the Union and management, or labor and capital. It reflects how much power the Union built and to what extent it was able to exert that power. As noted at the beginning of this article, our first contract took 12 years to win, and many of the provisions and much of the language throughout the contract is quite pro-management, reflecting a lack of worker power in the shop at the time. That said, it is also important to acknowledge that workers did win some important provisions, and, crucially, secured a first contract.
As it currently stands, our wages are awful and not competitive in a sector that is already underpaid. Combined with excessive workloads, subpar insurance, and a number of other issues, UJC cannot retain workers. Turnover is very high, and the projects are often unable to fill vacant positions. Importantly, our poor working conditions make it much more difficult to provide our clients with the highest quality of service they deserve; we manage to do so in spite of working conditions. Additionally, management’s ability to ‘spin off’ projects at its discretion poses an existential threat to the Union—any project that is spun off would not only cease to be part of UJCU, but the workers in that project would cease to be unionized altogether. In short, this contract campaign will determine if UJC is an organization where workers make enough to pay the bills and stay afloat or not. We’re ready to fight like hell to make sure that it is.
In the early Spring of 2025 we formed a Contract Action Team (CAT) to accompany the start of bargaining. We know full well that our power as workers doesn’t come from our ability to make the right arguments at the bargaining table, but rather through organizing and taking action and, if necessary, withholding our labor.
The CAT has already organized a number of actions to support the efforts of the BC. On the first day of bargaining, 85% of Union members emailed UJC’s COO (Kristin Jamberdino), Executive Director and founder (Doug Lasdon), and their anti-union Jackson Lewis attorney (Christopher Repole), expressing their support for the BC and the importance of our demands. Since then, the CAT has also organized a sign making action in which workers made signs highlighting why we do this work and the connections between a fair contract and our ability to support our clients as deeply as possible. We posted the signs throughout the room where we have bargaining to make sure that management got the message from members loud and clear. We organized another email action to pressure management to make movement on our side letter, which led to immediate movement on management’s end.
At the time of writing this article, management has demonstrated that, thus far, they are not taking our demands seriously. We have won TAs on a couple of our non-economic demands, but with less than six weeks before our contract expires, management has still not responded to our economic demands. Accordingly, on May 27, 2025, UJCU organized a march on the boss, Doug Lasdon, presenting him with written testimonials from workers regarding the importance of our economic bargaining demands and the fact that many UJCU members are struggling to make ends meet due to how low our wages are. We have additional escalatory actions planned, as we know that without pressure there is no chance of winning our demands.
We, the workers, are the ones who actually do the work and make this organization—this whole sector, rather—function, after all.
Looking Forward
Winning a new contract has become almost all encompassing for the Union. While all of our attention is invested in that fight, this contract campaign is, in many ways, only the beginning for UJCU. We have so much to accomplish once we’ve won the contract we deserve. Primary amongst these tasks will be defending and enforcing the gains we win in this contract, as well as continuing to build a strong Union culture in the workplace in which shop members are informed and empowered. Management operated with near impunity for over a decade at UJC after the shop unionized; that time has definitively come to an end.
For right now, though, the focus is on the sector-wide struggle for better working conditions for legal services workers, and therefore a more just, equitable, city for all New Yorkers. Together we are unstoppable.