Why I’m Stoked About Sectoral Bargaining (Even Though my Shop isn’t Aligned)

June 18, 2025

By Erin Strader

Erin Strader at a Sectoral Bargaining action. If you want to support appellate workers fighting for more funding like Erin, email local officials. — June 11, 2025

If you’ve spoken to me about my Union Local, 2325, in the past six months or so I probably brought up Sectoral Bargaining, how cool I thought it was, and also added that my union shop isn’t a part of it. But I’m still excited about it and proceed to tell you more information than you asked because you actually asked me if I’m “seeing anyone” and I promptly changed the subject.

So, first things first, what is Sectoral Bargaining?

Sectoral bargaining is a strategy to maximize union leverage by coordinating bargaining across multiple workplaces within a sector. Making the term ‘sector’-al bargaining so on the nose because everyone working in the same sector is bargaining at the same time. Honestly I’m breaking it down so much because it didn’t click for me when I first, or second time, heard the term. For example, the Big 3 auto manufacturers (Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors) are all separate companies and have their own contracts, but the UAW bargains at the same time with and demands the same things from all three. This forces the Big 3 to compete against each other to provide the best offers, instead of the workers competing against each other to accept the least pay. Ok girl, go off, we love collective action…. 

In this particular circumstance UAW local 2325, Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA) represents you guessed it reader! legal advocates and attorneys, predominantly in the New York City area, but not exclusively. The shops that are aligned are Appellate Advocates, Bronx Defenders, Center for Appellate Litigation, CAMBA, Communities Resist, Goddard Riverside Law Project, LAS Attorneys, LAS Interpreters and Investigators, LAS Support Staff (1199 SEIU), New York Legal Assistance Group, Office of the Appellate Defender, Riseboro, and Urban Justice Center. All these shops are within New York City and all of the listed shops have contracts that expire on June 30, 2025. This means all these units could strike at the same time. A strike this large would effectively shut down any legal service work in New York City as it would be nearly impossible for management of the ‘theoretical’ striking shops and the shops not aligned with Sectoral Bargaining to cover these cases and all the new cases. I literally can’t take on more cases please don’t ask me too!!!!!

*Erin takes a short break to stress cry about the potential of taking on more cases*

Ok erin’s back.

Wait, sorry, why are you stress crying?

Great question, thank you for asking, I’d love to tell you. So, let me take a step back and explain what we all do as members of ALAA shops. We represent New Yorkers on matters involving housing, homelessness, criminal defense, benefits, disabilities, family law, domestic violence, prisoner’s rights, reentry, elder law, consumer law, foreclosure, immigration, employment, tax law, health law, among many others.

The reason, at times, the work can make me stress cry is two fold. There are parts about my job, and the jobs of my fellow ALAA siblings,  that will always contain stressful, draining, and challenging components. For example, all of my clients live within 200% of the federal poverty line and they are all facing eviction. There will always be hard days in legal services work. That being said, and don’t tell my supervisor, I actually really like my job. I like defending tenants against evictions, litigating cases, coming up with creative solutions to complex problems, and the list goes on but I won’t bore you with all the intricacies of housing law I find interesting. The problem is, even though, I like my job, again don’t tell my supervisor she can’t know! is that with our current high case loads and low salaries I do not see this job as sustainable long term. Because it’s hard enough to start a family in this economy. To be clear when I say, ‘start a family’, I mean get a dog. But, it’s my understanding some of my colleagues want human children… To each their own.

But wait… You aren’t the workers making minimum wage at automanufacturing jobs, you’re all lawyers, you must make like, decent money…? Also you don’t work for a for-profit business with your CEO hoarding the profits, you have no profits! That’s your whole thing!? So exactly why is it helpful for Legal Service Providers to “maximize leverage by coordinating bargaining?”

 Great compound question, keep them coming. For one, we aren’t all attorneys. Yes, I conceded, I am an attorney. But not all staff at these shops are attorneys, many shops have  non-attorney members like advocates, paralegals, and other crucial staff that our organization could not run without. Maybe we could but we’d do a bad job and I would absolutely stress cry more!!! And the starting salary for non-attorneys is very low. Which, I believe, really undervalues how important their work is to our organizations. This also prevents us from hiring and retaining great staff. Additionally, the attorneys are also paid a low wage, especially in comparison to other attorneys doing the same work in different cities factoring in the cost of living for New York City.

Second, we are all “nonprofits” meaning we aren’t doing the work for the purpose of increasing value of our shareholders, no really this is how all for-profit businesses technically view their purpose. But that doesn’t mean we, as workers, should work without a living wage or even a living wage plus enough money that lets us afford GA Gov Ball tickets, I mean always a great lineup am i right? Also David Byrne was there?!?! I missed out… But nonprofits, like any entity that has employees, must still provide workers with good wages, benefits, and working conditions or risk losing all their highly competent, incredible, smart, funny, very very cool, employees to jobs that will provide them good wages, benefits, and working conditions. 

And on to your third question, this relates specifically to our funding source. As you may or may not know, all these organizations are funded predominantly through grants by New York City and New York State. And when individual shops go on strike to demand fair wages and working conditions, without the coordinated bargaining action, it can take a LOOONGGGG time for our organization’s funding to theoretically be at risk and management to face external pressure to end the strike. See the three month long strike by Mobilization for Justice in 2024: the wall-to-wall union had to strike for three months to achieve a 60k starting salary. Which only ended after New York City’s Comptroller stated his intention to investigate the organization’s house case representation numbers during the strike. Which like, to be clear, I will never miss an opportunity to talk about the MFJ 2024 strike, as it truly was the stuff the labor gods dreamed about, but for real, it shouldn’t have taken that long to get a 60k starting salary ya’ll!!! Anyway Sectoral Bargaining’s intention is to quell the need for 3 month strikes and keep the City’s legal service providers at our desks, in court, running around the city helping clients, etc.

Ok wait, that’s good and all but wasn’t the point of this first person narrative that you were excited even though it doesn’t affect you?

Wow, great insight reader, thank you for refocusing me to my original purpose. Yes, my shop is not currently aligned with Sectional Bargaining and that is a bummer. But there’s a chance this will help my shop achieve a better contract when we do bargain in the fall. Beyond a theoretical immediate benefit I might see, I wrote this three page, single spaced, personal narrative essay because I am personally inspired and excited about collective action. I have a button on my backpack that says “united we bargain, divided we beg”. We, as workers, should not be begging for simple things like living wages and health care. But in order to not beg, we must unite and stand up for not only our own personal interests, but also the interests of others in our workplace, community at large, and importantly the interests of those who are most vulnerable. When we unite and use our collective power we can win and we will win. 

Erin Strader is Chapter Chair at Hell’s Kitchen Organizers, a chapter of ALAA 2325 UAW. Views are her own. Hopes, dreams, goals, good jokes, bad jokes, dad jokes, and rhymes are also all her own.