Welcome & Introduction

We are happy to share more information about SOLAB: Southwest Ohio Legal Aid Brigade.  We want to be intentional and mindful about the information we share and how we share it. This means we aren't adding more mail to your mailboxes at the office or more emails to your Outlook inbox. Information and updates can be found here so we hope you check back regularly!

We want to share this information and provide updates not because of ill-will, but because of our desire for knowledge sharing and collaboration. We fully embrace the mission and purpose of Legal Aid. We also embrace change, collective voices, and community. Because of this, we believe that our efforts will move us forward as an organization.

Our effort started in the summer of 2022 as conversations with colleagues about issues we were seeing in our workplace. Those conversations turned into meetings where we talked, asked questions, and learned more about unions and the process of unionizing from experts in our community. We discussed and decided that we wanted to organize across all of LAS—including reception, intake, paralegals, legal assistants, staff attorneys and senior attorneys in the bargaining unit. 

As we grew, we elected a steering committee with members from all staff levels. We created a mission statement that embodied the spirit and intention behind our efforts to unionize. We reached out to eligible staff members so they could learn more and ask questions. We interviewed potential union affiliates and, in January 2023, voted to partner with AFSCME Council 8. We coordinated card signing events, where staff in the bargaining unit signed union authorization cards to indicate their desire to unionize. An overwhelming majority of staff within the bargaining unit signed cards.