Staff members at the civil legal services organization Build Up Justice NYC announced Monday that they plan to join the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, a union representing more than 3,400 public-interest workers across the greater metropolitan area.

More than 70 of the organization's 90 employees signed authorization cards, according to the ALAA, and staff members are calling on their management to voluntarily recognize their union. Build Up Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Workers say they want to see improvements to workloads, compensation and organizational transparency. Organizing committee member Sinan Ziyalan, a senior staff attorney with BUJ, told Law360 on Tuesday that he is juggling around 60 cases.

"I have colleagues in the 70s and 80s," he said. "There are people who have changed roles but didn't have their cases transferred for months at a time, such that they are left with caseloads even in the triple digits."

Factors like these, Ziyalan noted, have driven up BUJ's turnover rate. Despite joining in October 2022, he says he is among the more senior employees on his team.

"We have decades of experience walking out the door, basically," Ziyalan said.

One anonymous paralegal in BUJ's Brooklyn office said in a statement Monday that they lost 30% of their staff to union jobs at other legal services organizations.

"The vast majority of our organization works in Brooklyn Housing Court where we are the only legal services provider without a union," they added.

BUJ has been around for nearly 60 years. It helps low-income New Yorkers access affordable housing, secure commercial leases and small business contracts, and navigate IRS disputes. It also assists families with estate planning and advocates for survivors of domestic violence.

"A lot of people do lots of sensitive work that requires lots of emotional and personal investment, and we feel that we would be better serving our clients by having the type of protections that would enable us to serve the greater NY area better," Ziyalan said.

The union drive comes after New York City's indigent legal services landscape was rocked last summer by a series of strikes by ALAA member shops that took place as part of a larger sectoral bargaining strategy, with contracts set to expire at or around the end of June. The largest shop — the nearly 1,100 unionized members of the New York Legal Aid Society — dodged a walkout with a tentative deal just days before its strike deadline.

"The union is extremely important because our pay increases are not aligned with NYC inflation," an anonymous BUJ staff member said in a statement Monday. "Many of us are living paycheck to paycheck, which leaves us one paycheck away from facing evictions like the very clients we serve on a daily basis."

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.