We all know that working people can thank the Labor Movement for improving our quality of life by giving us things, such as: the weekend, the 40-hour workweek, and overtime pay. Teamsters Local 237 Union Members can also thank their union for being one of the first Union Legal Service Plans, providing Local 237 members with free legal services for many of the common personal legal issues that people face.
In 1972, New York State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz issued a report in which he found “…[I]t is a sad and ironic fact of our society today that large segments of the middle income class cannot afford necessary legal services to protect their basic rights and privileges…[and that]… the average moderate wage earner…too often finds himself in a position where his income exceeds maximum levels which would entitle him to free legal aid but is insufficient for him to retain private counsel to represent him.”
Within three years of this report being issued, Teamsters Local 237 Trustees, in a groundbreaking move to fill this need, created the Teamsters Local 237 Legal Services Plan. In the papers that established the Plan in 1975, the Trustees noted that “access to such [legal] services will contribute to the peace of mind and well-being of Eligible Members and their families.”
In the fifty years since the Teamsters Local 237 Trustees created the Legal Services Plan (LSP), the LSP attorneys, along with the Legal Secretaries, Receptionists and other administrative staff, have assisted Active Members with over 140,000 cases and Retirees with over 150,000 cases, in eight practice areas. Local 237 Members and Retirees have been able to stay in their apartments, purchase their homes, fight for custody of their children, prepare their wills, make sure they get what they are entitled to in a divorce, and get a fresh start by filing for bankruptcy, among other things, all without having to pay attorney’s fees for their lawyer.
This Union was on the vanguard of Legal Services in 1975 and remains at the forefront of this important mission today, as one of only three Unions in the city to provide their members with their own law firm. Workers who do not belong to Local 237, or the other two unions that provide legal services, are still in the same position that AG Lefkowitz bemoaned more than fifty years ago.
Teamsters Local 237 Legal Services Plan is proud to have played a part in “contributing to the peace of mind and well-being” of Union Members for the last half-century and looks forward to continuing to fight for the Members of Local 237.
