ended a days-long strike<\/a> late last month.<\/p>\nLegal services groups like The Bronx Defenders and Neighborhood Defender Service play a major role in the day-to-day operations of New York City\u2019s high-volume court system.<\/p>\n
They represent many low-income defendants accused of crimes, tenants facing eviction, immigrants fighting deportation and parents seeking custody of their kids. Bronx Defenders, alone, serves about 20,000 clients a year.<\/p>\n
Management at both public defender groups said they are still representing their clients and did not report any disruptions to service at this point.<\/p>\n
Non-union members are handling cases while their colleagues are out of work. But it\u2019s unclear how sustainable that solution is in one of the busiest court systems in the country.<\/p>\n
Juvall O. Scott, executive director of The Bronx Defenders, said in a statement that the organization is still open, in spite of the strike, and continuing to represent clients in arraignment court and other parts of the system.<\/p>\n
Neighborhood Defender Service posted on its website that it is also continuing to represent its clients while collective bargaining continues.<\/p>\n
Samantha Espada, an attorney at The Bronx Defenders, said the public defenders want to get back to their clients, but first they want the organization to agree to a better policy for remote work, higher cost of living adjustments and keeping social workers\u2019 wages on par with attorneys\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to serve our community, we want to serve the Bronx, and we can only do that if we are able to stick around to do this work in the long term,\u201d she said. \u201cWithout a fair contract, it\u2019s just not accessible to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott said The Bronx Defenders is sticking to an offer she thinks will alleviate high turnover among staff lawyers. She said the organization is offering to raise pay for all staff and expand benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is ironic that we are fighting with our union’s representatives to pay our attorneys more,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it is frustrating that the union’s representatives seem to be prioritizing their own agenda over the very real day-to-day concerns of our workers, our clients, and our organization.<\/p>\n
Jahnavi Bhaskar, an attorney at Neighborhood Defender Service, said her union is fighting management\u2019s push to end a long-standing practice of free health insurance, which she said has helped to attract new employees over the years.<\/p>\n
She said the organization cut off health insurance to striking union members last week, which has upped the urgency to get back to work as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
Neighborhood Defender Service said in a statement that a federal mediator has been assigned to help with the bargaining process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 400 attorneys, social workers and other support staff who represent low-income New Yorkers in criminal, immigration,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-312794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312794","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=312794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}