Legal Aid Nonprofit Workers On Strike in Response to Lockout, Missing Pay

Lee Paley

Staff have been on strike at the Oakland, CA-based legal aid nonprofit Root & Rebound (R&R) since March 18. The strike comes after a flood of shady labor practices reached a breaking point on March 17, when the organization furloughed and then locked out its workers, claiming vague financial difficulties.

The staff are organized under UAW Local 2320, which organizes workers from various nonprofits. About 15 lawyers and workers are on strike from the staff which in recent years has dwindled drastically as people leave the organization in part due to the missed paychecks and repeated lapses in health insurance coverage. Those who remain tell The Worker they’re fighting to save the organization and their jobs.

R&R is a nonprofit that provides “reentry” services for prisoners mainly in California but also in South Carolina. This means free legal aid from lawyers to people preparing for release, help expunging records, and case management services, such as connecting people to housing and employment. The striking staff who spoke with The Worker expressed a commitment to the mission of R&R—based in an understanding that the state crushes people through the repression and terror of the prison system.

R&R’s former In-Prison Programs Attorney Samuel Fishman told The Worker that he has willingly worked without pay because he wanted to help his clients, but that the organization has forced the strike. The workers’ “hard line” is to strike until the lockout and furlough ends, with everyone coming back with full pay and back pay. Workers are also demanding “open books” on finances and the democratic election of the board of directors—who have dragged the organization into this crisis.

R&R management has presented no demands or conditions to the workers since the lockout and strike, instead responding with a mix of delay tactics and total silence. It has issued no public statement about the lockout and strike or its impact on its services, which it continues to advertise on its website.

Since the staff unionized last year, management has stalled contract negotiations, and they are now stalling negotiations to end the Unfair Labor Practices strike and reopen for business.

The organization praises itself for employing former prisoners, who, according to unionized workers, stand at 25% of the organization’s workforce. A striking worker speaking on condition of anonymity told The Worker, “If your whole goal is to decrease the harms of mass incarceration, and you actively are hurting [formerly-imprisoned employees], it doesn’t make sense to me.”

Following usual union-busting tactics, the nonprofit attempted to label staff members as management to cut down those eligible to participate in the NLRB union recognition process. In a comedic twist, they are now sending managers to the strike negotiation meetings—not to negotiate with the workers, but to “join” the union and negotiate on their behalf. One manager who clumsily tried to infiltrate was videotaped on the picket line shouting at the picketers that they do not care about the clients while trying to drum up division between the lawyers and the hourly workers.

In contrast, staff explain that the struggle has brought the workers together across trade lines. One staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Worker that she went without pay for 4 months from the organization, thinking she was alone until the collective struggle brought her in.

Behind the striking workers’ struggle is the contradiction between bourgeois philanthropists aiming to ease class contradictions to maintain their power on one hand, and service to the people on the other, where the staffers’ work to lessen the ravages of the prison system on the working masses is held back or even thrown off its tracks. This contradiction is based in the system of private property, which drives the capitalists to crush workers and their struggles, perpetuating stratification and terror against working people in order to facilitate greater and deeper exploitation.

The striking workers are relying on donations and a small strike fund from the UAW. Donate to the workers’ solidarity fund here.

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