Lawyers protest Palestine poster prohibition
Posted Monday, September 23, 2024 6:31 pm
BY DUNCAN FREEMAN
New York Legal Assistance Group workers walked a picket line last week to protest a company policy implemented in May banning workers from putting up posters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Workers continue to defy the policy, saying it’s disproportionately and unjustly targeting pro-Palestinian speech.
DUNCAN FREEMAN / THE CHIEF
Unionized workers at the New York Legal Assistance Group held a lunchtime picket last week to protest management’s policy, in place since May, banning employees from putting posters related to the conflict in the Gaza Strip in their workspaces.
The attorneys, paralegals and administrative staff at the legal aid organization say that union members put up posters and other media in their cubicles on a variety of political topics, but it wasn’t until workers put up posters in support of Palestinians in the months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack that management instituted a crackdown.
Cameron Molyneaux, a staff attorney in the tenants rights division and chair of the NYLAG union said at the Sept. 17 picket that the policy creates a “Palestine exception.”
“Management is telling us to leave that one political view at the door but everything else is fine,” Molyneaux said. “We’ve never had a policy like this before.”
For years, NYLAG employees have put up posters expressing support for Black Lives Matter or advocating for other political causes such as abolishing the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he added. In the fall, workers started putting up more posters related to Palestine and the practice intensified early this year, workers said.
In the spring, NYLAG managers began telling outspoken union members to remove media related to the Gaza Strip war from their cubicles. Some members declined to do so and in late May a company-wide policy banned all posters related to the conflict, regardless of whether they were pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.
Since then, managers, led by NYLAG’s general counsel Randal Jeffrey, have been walking around the office taking down posters every day, according to sources. But workers reprint the posters and put them back up.
Alleged unfair labor practice Alongside their pro-Palestine posters, workers have also begun putting up signs with messages protesting the poster policy itself. Those posters have been removed too, even though some don’t directly reference the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, workers said.
Maya Adelman Cabral, one of the first workers have posters removed from her workspace, said that she’s yet to hear of pro-Israel content being removed and said the timing of the policy’s announcement was “suspicious” given the upswing in pro-Palestine speech just before it.
“We know that this policy is just an excuse for NYLAG to harass workers who they know stand with Palestinian liberation,” said Adelman Cabral, a paralegal. “This is their last-ditch attempt to control us.”
In June, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Local 2325 of the United Auto Workers, filed an unfair labor practice charge against NYLAG over the policy. Molyneaux said that the policy is “too broad” and a “coercive work rule” that was instituted without any input from the union.
NYLAG management has rejected the union’s attempts to bargain over the policy, Molyneaux added. Managers also declined to participate in a recent town hall where more than 20 workers spoke out against the policy.
A spokesperson for NYLAG did not reply to a request for comment on the policy or the unfair labor practice charge.
The widespread frustration with the policy expressed at the town hall, and management’s refusal to engage with workers’ concerns, drove union members to their one-hour picket last Tuesday, Molyneaux explained.
More than half of the unions over 250 members participated in the picket alongside ALAA officials and other unionized attorneys. The poster policy is only the latest flashpoint between ALAA members and management at the legal aid organizations where they work.
Last year, management at the Legal Aid Society implored their employees not to support an ALAA resolution that labeled Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip as a genocide. Members passed the resolution anyway (https://www.thechiefleader.com/stories/house-republicans-probe-lawyers-local-over-gaza-cease-fire-vote,51887?) and the union has since faced a congressional subpoena (https://www.thechiefleader.com/stories/uaw-lawyers-local-fightscongressional-subpoena,52170?) and a suit (https://www.thechiefleader.com/stories/legal-aid-lawyers-sue-union-claimingthat-dues-violate-first-amendment,52409?) from angered members.
Adelman Cabral said that the ALAA has been “instrumental” in supporting members protesting the poster policy.
“I care deeply about the wellbeing of my fellow workers who are being surveilled, harassed and censored on a daily basis all in the name of safety,” Adleman Cabral said, before alluding to the Legal Assistant Group’s general counsel. “The only thing making me afraid at NYLAG right now is our executive suite, who has continued to show everyone that works that they’re just going to double down on this and continue to raid our cubicles. If anyone makes me feel unsafe here at NYLAG, it’s Randal Jeffrey.”
