Massachusetts voters will decide Nov. 3 whether the state’s public defenders should have something many other public employees already have: the right to sit down with their employer and bargain collectively over their jobs.
Question 2 would allow employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, or CPCS, to participate in collective bargaining. If they negotiate a contract, CPCS would then be required to request the funding needed for that agreement from the governor within 30 days.
The Yes On 2 campaign was organized to help grant public defenders the right to join a union. The campaign’s central argument states: CPCS employees should have the same opportunity to organize and negotiate collectively that many others have.
The Yes On 2 campaign is backed by labor organizations and other groups. Its supporters include National Association of Government Employees, Service Employment International Union Local 888, American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
For supporters, the issue is about more than forming a union. They argue that the people responsible for defending some of the state’s most vulnerable residents should have a collective voice in determining the conditions under which they do that work.
Collective bargaining allows employees to negotiate as a group with their employer. Depending on the agreement, that can include wages, benefits, hours, leave, workload and other workplace conditions.
“If it passes, it would allow the staff at the public defenders to be able to collectively bargain and organize around issues that affect them,” said Shira Diner, an instructor at the Criminal Defense Clinic at Boston University Law School and former staff attorney at the Public Defender Office at CPCS. “It wouldn’t automatically put them in a union, but it’s the first step of the ability to be able to have a union organization effort.”
It would not, however, automatically give public defenders a raise or guarantee particular benefits. Those issues would have to be negotiated between the employees and CPCS, and if an agreement requires additional state money, Question 2 requires CPCS to ask the governor for that funding.
A “no” vote would leave the current system in place, meaning CPCS employees would not gain collective-bargaining rights.
“People have been working on trying to get this issue raised for many years,” Diner said. “Before I came to BU, I worked at the public defender’s office at CPCS. I was a staff attorney there, so, I remember efforts around organizing staff for many years, and right now the way that the law in Massachusetts is written, the law that created the public defender’s office, created in such a way that they are unable to collectively bargain and to unionize and organize and work together to look out for their interests.”
There is no organized opposition to Question 2. But the debate over whether to allow Massachusetts public defenders to unionize has been going on for years.
“What a lot of people don’t understand is that we’ve been trying to go the legislative route for many, many legislative cycles,” said Jeffery Whiteside, social service advocate CPCS. “I think they first tried to do it back in the late ’70s, early ’80s and then there’s been times where we’ve had a lot of momentum. We’ve had a super majority in the House and the Senate, and the legislature for whatever reason, has chosen not to pass it.”
Bills addressing collective bargaining for CPCS employees have been introduced repeatedly in the Massachusetts Legislature, including six times in legislative sessions between 2015 and 2025.
After years of failed legislative attempts, supporters turned to the ballot. The Yes On 2 campaign collected more than 100,000 signatures to put the question before voters.
“I’ve been involved with the fight to unionize since I started at CPCS in 2015,” Whiteside said. “I remember times when I and fellow coworkers that were involved in the union push were like, you know, sit out in front of grocery stores and get union cards signed by people. I think the thing that people are most surprised about is they just assume, because we’re state employees, that we have in union.”
The Yes On 2 campaign shows that Massachusetts is different from other states in the region.
Its campaign website argues that “Boston is one of the only major cities outside the South without a unionized public defender system,” pointing to unionized public defenders in cities including New York, Hartford, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Los Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The comparison is central to the campaign’s argument: public defenders elsewhere have been able to bargain collectively, while Massachusetts public defenders have not had the same right.
CPCS employees provide legal representation to people who cannot afford an attorney.
The agency also employs and coordinates the work of investigators, social workers, paralegals, administrative staff, and others who help provide legal representation.
“Having the right to unionize empowers employees to have a voice in the workplace,” Whiteside said.
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This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.