Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS) seeks an Employment Law Unit staff attorney to work with community-based worker centers and to represent low-wage, predominantly immigrant, workers in wage and hour disputes in judicial, administrative and legislative advocacy. The attorney may also handle other employment law matters such as representing unemployed workers in unemployment hearings and court appeals.
In addition to direct representation of workers in individual, group, and class action cases to enforce wage and other workplace rights, the attorney will provide worker centers with legal advice, staff and worker training, referrals, and other support for worker center organizing and leadership-building efforts. The attorney may also have the opportunity to represent worker centers in systemic advocacy efforts to achieve policy changes on issues such as wage theft, substantive wage rights, independent contractor misclassification, access to workers’ compensation benefits, and rights specific to workers in domestic and temporary jobs. Unemployment advocacy may involve representing individual clients as well as systemic advocacy in judicial, policy, and legislative arenas. The attorney’s work will likely involve or overlap with issues specific to immigrant clients, such as language access and immigration status.
Salary is based on union scale. GBLS provides excellent benefits, including health and dental insurance and student loan repayment assistance plan for eligible attorneys.
Qualifications: The attorney must: 1) be admitted to the Mass. Bar or admitted elsewhere and able to practice in Massachusetts under SJC Rule 3.04; 2) have no more than 5 years of legal experience; 3) have experience representing low-wage and/or immigrant workers, preferably with experience with wage and hour law and knowledge of the special considerations in representing immigrant workers and/or representing workers in unemployment matters; 4) have a commitment to community lawyering; and 5) have excellent writing skills. Fluency in Spanish or another language spoken by GBLS clients is strongly preferred. The position may involve attending evening or weekend meetings to accommodate workers’ schedules.
Candidates should submit a cover letter indicating the reason for interest in this position, resume, and brief writing sample to Sonia Marquez, Director of Human Resources, via email at [email protected]. Please refer to job code: EU-ATT when applying for this position. Application deadline: November 6, 2018 or until position is filled.