BxD Supervisors Defy Bosses, Side With Workers And Clients
by Navruz Baum
On July 26th, workers at the Bronx Defenders (BxD) ratified a record contract with 8%-10% raises, flexible work from home, and free speech protections. We’ve previously reported on the workers’ militant contract campaign. But these wins also came in the wake of supervisors defying heavy-handed repression to join the picket line and pressure management to agree to the workers’ proposals.
In the lead up to bargaining, workers faced deteriorating working conditions and wage inequality. The BxD attorney step 1 salary was $6,000 lower than that at any other public defender. The lowest paid workers started at just $52,343, while the executive director made over $28,000 per month. Every month workers fled these conditions, adding up to 60% turnover over the previous two years. “Clients will get a new attorney and ask “how long are you going to be here?”” says Ella Nalepka, a BxD civil attorney and bargaining committee (BC) member, “it disrupts the client relationship, hurts the case, and hurts the client’s trust in our organization.”
Seeing these conditions, line supervisors felt compelled to side with workers and clients in their struggle against upper management. During strikes and contract campaigns, upper management often gives line supervisors orders to act as its agents: to weaken strikes by covering bargaining unit work, spreading anti-union propaganda, and encouraging supervisees to scab. BxD’s management was no exception. As the workers’ strike deadline approached, upper management told supervisors to expect to take on the work of the 260 striking workers. “BxD’s plan for a strike was very much to just run the supervisors into the ground” says Jessica Coffrin-St. Julien, a BxD immigration attorney and contract action team (CAT) member. Management went so far as to threaten termination for any supervisor who joined the picket line.
Despite this repression (or perhaps, in-part, because of it), line supervisors chose to side with their supervisees. “Supervisors did a lot of their own organizing, but they did ask for feedback” says Coffrin-St. Julien. This included recommendations from supervisees to respect the picket line or, for supervisors who chose to cross it, to accept only their normal caseload.
In the lead up to the strike deadline, some supervisors joined the workers at their practice pickets, defying upper management’s intimidation. They also wrote letters directly advocating to management. Supervisors in the criminal defense practice urged them to “reach an agreement and save our office.” Supervisors in the immigration practice took it a step further, exhorting management to accept the union’s proposals and “ameliorate, in material ways, the longstanding challenges to longevity in our Practice.” After discussing both the attrition crisis and the impending strike, the immigration supervisors closed their letter by asking upper management “how are our clients' interests served if there is no one left in our office to represent them?”
These actions may have not been protected from retaliation by law, but they were protected by their collective nature, and by the fact that upper management could little afford to further alienate, much less fire, supervisors while facing down a strike. As the July 22nd strike deadline approached, upper management scrapped their crumbling plans to break the strike and agreed to the worker’s proposals instead. It may have been the workers’ militancy that won these gains, but it was the supervisors’ courage that helped avert a strike.