Public Interest

Legal Aid Strike Offers Window Into NY Public Interest Compensation

If you're considering public interest work, this is what the salary and benefits look like.

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On January 30, the union representing attorneys and support staff at New York’s MFY Legal Services voted to strike. Staff and management have taken their cases public. The result: you and I get a peek at the compensation package for New York public interest attorneys.

First, some background. According to its website, “MFY provides free legal assistance to residents of New York City on a wide range of civil legal issues… while simultaneously working to end the root causes of inequities through impact litigation, law reform and policy advocacy.” The fact that MFY does more than simply represent individuals suggests that it is untethered by the strings attached to funding from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). In fact, it appears that MFY is among the plaintiffs that sued LSC way back in 2001 over the strings attached to LSC funding.

An article from the New York Law Journal reports that “two-thirds of the agency’s $8 million annual budget is funded by state and city grants.” MFY’s 2013 Annual Report bears this out.

The same New York Law Journal article reports that 56 staff members at MFY are members of the Legal Services Staff Association (LSSA), a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers. According to an MFY statement, the previous contract between MFY and its unionized staff expired on December 31, 2014. Two months of negotiations resulted in an offer from MFY that LSSA rejected.

There are a couple sticking points. First, salary: MFY has made available on its website its salary offer to union attorneys. Under MFY’s offer, a first year attorney’s salary would increase by year three anywhere from $7,772 to $13.765, or 12.78% to 22.64%. Assuming I’ve done the math correctly, these numbers yield a starting salary of $60,800.

Of course, the two sides differ about what to take away from this offer. In a statement on MFY’s website, MFY’s Executive Director Jeanette Zelhof said, “MFY’s salary offer provides significant increases to a staff who already enjoy among the highest salaries and most generous benefits in the nonprofit legal services sector.” The union, however, claims that “these numbers conflate the ‘steps,’ which annually compensate workers for their increased experience, with the cost-of-living adjustment, which annually increases all salaries across the board in recognition of their decreasing real value.” The union says it’s seeking 3% cost-of-living adjustments but that, if you separate cost-of-living out from the raise structure offered by MFY, the adjustments that have been offered are only 2 to 2.25%.

The other sticking point has to do with benefits. In particular, though MFY does provide staff with fully-paid health benefits, it does not presently provide paid parental leave. The offer rejected by MFY staff last month included six weeks’ paid parental leave, but the union claims that this offer is “contingent on harmful and unrelated policy changes.” Again, MFY has made these proposed policy changes available on its website. They are: allowing MFY broad rather than targeted external posting of new job vacancies, requiring prior approval for staff to work from home, and restrictions on the use of vacation and sick leave taken during a period of paid parental leave.

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Leaving aside the posturing and rhetoric on each side of the labor dispute, what should we take away from all this?

First, in terms of benefits, it’s pretty shameful that MFY has gone so long without offering paid parental leave, but it looks like that will change when the dust settles on the current dispute. And, aside from that issue, MFY seems to have a pretty great benefit package.

As for salary, the rumors are true: public interest work, and civil legal services in particular, doesn’t pay well. (For comparison’s sake, according to this calculator, a $60,000 salary in Manhattan is the equivalent of just $31,500 in Chicago or $36,500 in L.A.) I have little doubt that MFY is correct in suggesting that its salaries are market-rate or above market for civil legal services organizations in New York — low salaries just reflect the state of the sector. In any event, at least now you job-seekers have some hard numbers to consider.

Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

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