This week, Massachusetts voters chose to expand the right to unionize to employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (“CPCS”), the state agency that provides attorneys for indigent criminal defendants. CPCS currently employs approximately 500 attorneys statewide, as well as paralegals and other support staff. The ballot measure passed with 64% voter support.

The approved ballot measure amends G.L. c. 150E—the Massachusetts law that permits collective bargaining in the public sector—to specifically include CPCS as an employer under § 1 of the law. It also amends § 7(b) & (c), which addresses appropriation requests and funding for public sector collective bargaining agreements. Because CPCS is now an employer under G.L. c. 150E, CPCS employees enjoy the rights the law provides under § 2, including the right to form a union to bargain collectively with CPCS and the right to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid and protection free from employer interference, restraint, or coercion.

Although CPCS employees have the right to join a union, the ballot measure did not automatically create a union for CPCS employees. Before CPCS employees can bargain collectively with CPCS for a contract, they must choose whether they want a union to represent them. Employees make this choice either through a process known as “card check,” where they sign a card authorizing a specific union to represent them for the purposes of collective bargaining, or through a secret ballot election held by the Department of Labor Relations (“DLR”). If a majority of employees chooses to be represented by a union, either through card check or election, the DLR would certify the union as the exclusive bargaining representative and the employer—here CPCS—would be required to recognize and bargain with that union.

While it remains to be seen whether CPCS employees form a union, the approval of the ballot measure and the resulting changes to G.L. c. 150E represent a crucial step in that process. Now that G.L. c. 150E, § 1 recognizes CPCS as an employer, CPCS employees can choose whether to be represented by a union.