![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784748049_195_MG_0526.jpeg\" "\\"Brooklyn")
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Members of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys rallied at City Hall Park in June.<\/p>\n
Photo by Max Parrott<\/p>\n
The union representing around 500 public defense attorneys and legal staff in Brooklyn and Queens reached a tentative deal on Tuesday night, getting hundreds of staff attorneys back to work on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn Defender Services Union reached a contract agreement that it said includes a set of economic and workplace gains including a higher wage floor, stronger benefits and remote work arrangements five days after going on strike. The union is still sharing details of the deal with its membership, who will vote on whether to ratify the contract.<\/p>\n
The announcement came as pressure for nonprofit legal service providers around the city continues to ratchet up. The Bronx Defenders and Neighborhood Defense Services both have strike dates set in the next week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tentative agreement is an historic step forward for frontline staff at Brooklyn Defender Services,\u201d wrote a union spokesperson in a statement. \u201cBut we want to be clear: it should not have taken a strike for BDS management to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The provider\u2019s Executive Director, Lisa Schreibersdorf, said that she was pleased that the attorneys would be returning to work.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are thankful to Mayor Mamdani for additional public defense funding, which enabled BDS to provide significant salary increases and hold the line on employee contributions to their health insurance plans,\u201d Schreibersdorf said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Prior to the strike, union members had said that the wage floor and lack of remote work options had become a sticking point in negotiations. In addition to those policies, the union outlined other gains, including more sick leave and student\u2011loan assistance programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The union also said that the contract relieves union members from signing into a location-tracking app to clock in and out of work.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
The union also carved a role in helping to choose BDS\u2019s next executive director through negotiations, according to its statement. Schreibersdorf, who is set to retire in December, has clashed with the union in the past year over allegations of trying to recruit a more management-friendly union.<\/p>\n
The union has been negotiating with BDS management since Sunday, when leadership agreed to return to the bargaining table two days after the strike commenced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pressure ramped up on Monday as a group of 31 New York electeds and political candidates signed a letter putting called on the Brooklyn Defender Services management to come to an agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agreement marks the first new contract of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA)<\/a> local unions under Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, whom the union supported on the campaign trail. The contract comes from a significant allocation of new funds to BDS, which gets a majority of its funding from the city government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys rallied at City Hall Park in June. Photo by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,60990,114892,100,99,2710,9,24,63,15254],"class_list":["post-303134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-defender-services","tag-brooklyn-defender-services-union","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-strike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}