Public defenders deserve the right to unionize

Yes On 2 Will allow state public defenders to unionize.

Workers at the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) provide free legal services to residents throughout Massachusetts. Our staff include teams of lawyers and paralegals, social workers and investigators, administrative assistants and interpreters — just to name a few.

But unlike so many other state workers in Massachusetts, our staff has long been left out of the laws that give public employees the right to unionize. Yes On 2 is the campaign to grant public defenders the right to join a union.

Most State employees have the right to join a union.

Our social workers and investigators work just as hard as the unionized social workers and investigators at the Department of Children and Families. And our attorneys and paralegals walk into the same courtrooms every day as the unionized police officers, court staff, and probation officers.

Just as so many state workers — from public school teachers, to state nurses, to MBTA bus drivers — have long had the right to join a union of their choice, our public defenders deserve that same basic right.

Boston is one of the only major cities (outside the south) without a unionized public defender system.

Public defenders are unionized from New York, NY to Hartford, CT; from Philadelphia, PA to Baltimore, MD; from Chicago, IL to Detroit, MI; from Los Angeles, CA to Seattle, WA. But not in Boston.

That puts us in the company of states like Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina — where collective bargaining is largely banned for public workers.

We want to attract and retain the best advocates.

Massachusetts is home not only to some of the best law schools in the nation, but also some of the best social work programs. From Harvard, to Boston College, to Boston University, to Northeastern, to Smith, we educate many of the brightest and most talented aspiring advocates in the country.

But too often, our graduates take their degrees out of state, where unionized public defender organizations offer enforceable contracts, sustainable working conditions, and a voice in the management of their agencies. High rates of burnout and turnover in Massachusetts don’t just inconvenience our staff — they create backlogs, slow down our courts, and delay justice for the clients we serve. We aim to reverse that trend.

We’ve been fighting for union rights since 1979.

We tried to unionize three times — in 1979, in 1993, and in 2015. Each time, labor boards told us we couldn’t do it without first changing the state law to specify that we had the right to collectively bargain.

State legislators have taken up our cause, authoring bills to recognize our right to unionize — in 2013, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025. Every time, the legislation was placed on the back burner, delayed, and never brought to a vote.

After more than a decade of inaction from Beacon Hill, we’ve collected more than 100,000 signatures from Massachusetts residents to get Question 2 on the ballot.

Now, we need your support: Vote Yes on 2 and finally give public defenders in Massachusetts the same right to unionize that has long been available to so many of our peers.