Complaints filed this week against a labor union allege it discriminated against its Jewish members after Oct. 7, 2023, and actively obstructed efforts by their employer to remedy the antisemitic environment that the union created.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed the complaints with the National Labor Relations Board and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against A Better NYLAG, a chapter of the United Autoworkers of America, which is known as the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys.
The members are employees of the New York Legal Assistance Group, which represents cash-strapped citizens in eviction, deportation, health care and government services cases.
The complaints allege that the union, which is the exclusive bargaining representative for New York Legal Assistance Group staff, displayed and endorsed posters that sought to rationalize and support the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“The union cannot throw its members of one protected identity under the bus in favor of supporting other members’ ‘right’ to discriminate against or torment them,” according to the complaint that the Brandeis Center filed with the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency.
“Yet that is exactly what A Better NYLAG is doing—choosing to discriminate against its many Jewish members and non-members in its bargaining unit who are experiencing a discriminatory, toxic environment in fighting to allow that discriminatory, toxic environment to continue unremedied,” per the complaint.
A Jewish NYLAG employee wrote to his employer that “these signs are having the discriminatory effect of pushing Jewish people and/or Zionists out of these spaces,” per the complaint. “As a Jewish person, I should not have to work in such close proximity to signs that direct hatred towards me.”
A Better NYLAG filed a labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which the Brandeis Center says was unfair, against NYLAG, after the latter’s management maintained a policy of neutrality on the Israel-Hamas war, which barred posters on the subject. A Better NYLAG also criticized NYLAG management for letting Jewish staffers stay home for their safety amid an anti-Israel protester, per the complaint.
“Jewish American union members, like all other working people, are entitled to union representation that supports them fairly and equally against toxic environments,” stated Ken Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
“In this case, the union actually made things worse, actively attempting to block management efforts to address a workplace that had been made inhospitable for Jewish workers,” he said. “This is exactly the opposite of what unions should be doing.”