The union for the Center for Family Representation — an organization of more than 175 attorneys, social workers and advocates, according to its website — announced on Tuesday that it had secured a contract after four months of negotiations.
According to the union, the deal includes starting salaries of $95,000 for attorneys and $76,000 and $72,500 for nonattorney legal worker roles. It also includes annual step increases with 3% cost of living adjustments, $3,000 longevity bonuses at three years of service and every three years after, a $350 monthly differential for interpreters and translators, additional salary steps for staff members in positions requiring lived experience, a continued additional $3,000 annual stipend for eligible nonattorney roles, lower healthcare premium contributions, and annual employer contributions to a student-loan assistance fund.
In addition to the economic gains, the contract will include written workload targets for the first time, with new case-handling staff not expected to reach full capacity until after their first year. That agreement came after months of contention over hiring vacancies and complaints of staff burnout.
The contract also includes 20 weeks of parental leave, up to 60 days of short-term disability at full pay, 15 days of paid bereavement leave, up to eight weeks of paid sabbatical leave for eligible staff at five years, up to six weeks of paid study leave for law graduates taking the bar exam a second time, unlimited vacation carryover and stronger payout protections.
"This agreement will make a real difference in the lives of workers across CFR, and it shows just how far we have come," the union told its members in an email shared with Law360 Pulse.
The CFR union is one of five unions represented by the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, a United Auto Workers affiliate that represents more than 3,500 legal services workers in the New York City metro area whose contracts expired on June 30. It is the third of the five to reach a contract, but the first to do so without a strike.
"CFR is proud to have reached a tentative agreement with ALAA that will allow us to continue our groundbreaking holistic model," executive director and CEO Tehra Coles told Law360 Pulse in an email on Wednesday. "The agreement includes substantial salary increases, reduced healthcare costs, and other important reforms that, together with our generous remote work policy, demonstrate our commitment to a sustainable future for both our staff and our clients.
"We are grateful to Mayor Mamdani and the city for providing additional resources to help us reach an agreement," Coles said. "This tentative contract reflects our commitment to supporting the dedicated staff who make our mission of defending the rights of families possible while ensuring we can continue providing high-quality representation and holistic services to our clients."
Meanwhile, the Bronx Defenders union remains on strike after walking off the job on July 27. It did, however, say in an Instagram post Tuesday night that it reached a tentative agreement on two open issues.
Management agreed to expand reprieve leave to all staff, rather than limiting it to client-facing staff, according to the post. The union also accepted management's proposal for a delayed start on student loan relief. The Bronx Defenders will join the UAW Student Loan Assistance Fund, which partially reimburses members' student loan payments, starting in the 2029 fiscal year.
Those developments came after the unions for Brooklyn Defender Services and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem recently reached tentative agreements with their managements after about a week on strike.
The union for Catholic Migration Services remains in negotiations. Updates on the bargaining process have been sparse, but the union said in an Instagram post back in June that management has offered 4% raises, which it argued is insufficient for the current inflation rate.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.
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