Question 2: whether public defenders gain the right to unionize

NEW BEDFORD Massachusetts voters will decide Nov. 3 whether the state's public defenders gain something most other public employees already have: the right to form a union and bargain collectively with their employer. Question 2 covers the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the agency that provides lawyers to people who cannot afford one. This is the ninth and final installment in a South Coast 360 series explaining each of the nine statewide questions on the ballot; earlier installments covered the all-party primary plan, Election Day voter registration, the tax-cap rewrite, the conservation earmark, starter-home zoning, the marijuana sales repeal, the gun-law referendum and public records on Beacon Hill.

The official summary, written by Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell's office, reads: "This proposed law would specify that employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services ('CPCS') are permitted to engage in collective bargaining with their employer. It would also require CPCS, after executing a collective bargaining agreement, to request the appropriation necessary to fund such agreement from the Governor." No vote was taken on the petition by the Senate or the House before May 6, 2026.

The guide's vote statements, written jointly by the attorney general and Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin, read: "A YES VOTE would specify that Committee for Public Counsel Services employees may form a union to collectively bargain with their employer." And: "A NO VOTE would make no change to the law governing labor relations for Committee for Public Counsel Service employees."

CPCS is the state's public defender agency, responsible for legal services to people entitled by law to representation who cannot afford an attorney. It employs roughly 500 staff attorneys and contracts with about 3,000 private attorneys who take assigned cases, and it assigns an average of about 155,600 new cases a year. A 15-member committee appointed by the governor, legislative leaders and the Supreme Judicial Court governs it, and it operates as an independent judicial branch agency.

The fight is older than the ballot campaign. In 2015, SEIU Local 888 and CPCS employees petitioned the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board for bargaining rights; the board held that because CPCS is not explicitly included in the collective bargaining statutes, the decision to grant or deny those rights rests with the Legislature. Bills to add CPCS followed six times in legislative sessions between 2015 and 2025, and none reached a vote, so supporters turned to the initiative petition.

The in-favor argument in the official guide reads: "A YES vote will give employees of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) the right to organize a union and collectively bargain with their employer if they choose to do so. CPCS employees provide critical support for the constitutional right to counsel and help ensure that Massachusetts residents who cannot afford an attorney have access to legal representation. Yet, unlike other state employees, CPCS employees do not currently have the right to choose whether to organize and collectively bargain over wages, benefits and working conditions. This ballot question would allow CPCS employees to form a union if they so choose. It simply gives CPCS employees the right to make that choice for themselves."

The yes campaign, Yes On 2, is backed by SEIU Local 888, the National Association of Government Employees, American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Its committee, Labor Unions for Public Counsel Workers Rights, reported raising about $1.07 million through the Oct. 20 reports, almost all of it from SEIU Local 888 ($542,060) and the National Association of Government Employees ($526,000), according to state campaign finance records. SEIU 888 president Tom McKeever argues 180 other state agencies already have the right to collectively bargain. Shira Diner, a Boston University Law School instructor and former CPCS staff attorney, told the Newton Beacon a yes vote "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."

The against argument in the official guide warns that bargaining "creates serious operational and fiscal risks for the judiciary," saying CPCS "operates as an independent judicial branch agency tasked with providing constitutional defense to indigent clients," and that introducing collective bargaining "could disrupt existing management and supervisory frameworks, introduce ambiguity into lines of authority, and create operational inefficiencies," with possible unintended consequences "for the delivery of legal services, particularly if they limit the agency's ability to respond flexibly to fluctuating caseloads, staffing needs, and court demands." No committee had registered against the question as of October, Ballotpedia reports; the listed opposing organizations are Americans for Tax Reform and the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. The state's official fiscal statement says the law may have an impact on state finances, since CPCS is funded in part by state appropriations, but that the impact is difficult to project because the outcomes of any bargaining are uncertain.

The Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis, in its voter guide, finds the design familiar and the trade-offs real. Several other states already let state-employed public defenders unionize, and the path to a union in Question 2 matches approaches that have worked for other Massachusetts state workers. The bargaining itself would run differently: most state employees negotiate directly with the governor's representatives, while CPCS workers would bargain first with agency management and then need the governor's sign-off on the funding parts of a deal, a two-step structure the center says could produce delays and tension. Any pay increase won at the table would pressure the CPCS budget, likely requiring the agency to employ fewer workers or draw more state dollars. The center also separates the question from the 2025 pay crisis and work stoppage among the private bar advocates who take assigned cases: only state employees would be eligible for this union, though a union's demands could shape the state's future reliance on private-sector lawyers.

Polling favors yes. A Boston Globe poll of 500 registered voters taken Oct. 14 to 18 found 56.4 percent in support, 25.2 percent opposed and 17.2 percent undecided; a University of Massachusetts poll of 800 registered voters taken Oct. 5 to 12 found 53 percent support with 28 percent undecided. The Berkshire Eagle's editorial board has endorsed a yes vote. For the South Coast, where CPCS attorneys and assigned private lawyers staff the local courts every day, the measure would change labor relations only for the agency's own employees; the private bar advocates who take cases alongside them are not covered. Whatever the vote, the right to counsel itself does not change.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.