IMC-CAN Team Weekly Action August 26, 2026
This fall, the IMC-CAN is devoting weekly action alerts about the upcoming 9 Ballot Questions on the November Ballot.
This week, we are tackling Question #2: Massachusetts Question 2, Permit Collective Bargaining for Committee for Public Counsel Services Employees Initiative (2026).
Supporters of Ballot Question 2 for the November election argue that Massachusetts cannot maintain a strong and effective public-defense system without supporting the people who do this essential work.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) is the state agency that provides court-appointed legal representation to low-income Massachusetts residents. CPCS attorneys, social workers, investigators, paralegals, interpreters, and other employees protect the constitutional rights of people facing incarceration, family separation, involuntary commitment, and other life-altering consequences, yet CPCS employees have historically been excluded from the collective-bargaining rights available to many other public workers in Massachusetts. The inability to unionize has resulted in abysmally poor wages, burnout, high turnover, and interrupted court proceedings because of staffing shortages.
Question 2 would allow eligible CPCS employees to organize and bargain collectively over wages, benefits, and working conditions. Supporters contend that giving these workers a meaningful voice in their workplace can help CPCS recruit and retain experienced professionals, reduce instability in an already strained public-defense system, and strengthen the quality and continuity of representation available to people who cannot afford an attorney.
At a time when Massachusetts courts are straining under heavy caseloads and an unprecedented immigration-enforcement push is placing even more people at risk of detention, deportation, family separation, and loss of fundamental rights, a strong, stable, and adequately supported public-defense system is more important than ever.
Source
Background
What is the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS)?
The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) is the state agency in Massachusetts that provides legal representation to people who cannot afford an attorney. CPCS provides free legal help to low-income people in criminal and civil cases where the law requires legal representation. CPCS attorneys represent Massachusetts sex offender registry cases, appeals, and post-conviction advocacy. CPCS has a staff of about 500 public defenders (staff attorneys) and a panel of 3,000 certified private attorneys (Bar Advocates) who work under this program.
Immigration Supports: CPCS operates an Immigration Impact Unit (IIU) that advises CPCS staff and appointed counsel about immigration consequences of state cases. CPCS now also participates directly in the Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative (MACI), which provides representation to eligible detained and non-detained Massachusetts residents in federal removal proceedings. CPCS currently has MACI attorneys representing clients in Immigration Court, before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and in some federal-court matters.
Why is Question 2 important?
Court-appointed attorneys for low-income Massachusetts residents are a critical component of our legal system and Constitutional guarantees. When someone has the legal right to an attorney but cannot afford one, the Commonwealth must provide qualified legal counsel. Without adequate legal representation, the most vulnerable in our communities would be defenseless against malicious prosecutions, unfounded accusations, and state overreach. Our justice system does not work if it cannot protect constitutional rights and ensure access to legal counsel.
Question 2 concerns the employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), Massachusetts’ public defender agency. It would bring CPCS employees under the Commonwealth’s public-sector collective-bargaining law, allowing eligible employees to organize and bargain collectively with CPCS over wages, hours, and working conditions. It would also require CPCS, after reaching a collective-bargaining agreement, to request from the Governor the appropriation necessary to fund that agreement. Question 2 does not determine salaries or other contract terms itself. Advocates for Question 2 note that the vast majority of Massachusetts state employees – like MBTA workers, Department of Children and Families (DCF) social workers, teachers and so many more – already have the right to form a union. This ballot measure would give CPCS employees that same right to collectively bargain. A stronger voice for public defenders means a stronger, more effective defense of the constitutional rights that protect us all.
A public-defense system under strain
Massachusetts relies on two groups of attorneys to provide court-appointed representation: salaried CPCS staff attorneys and private attorneys, commonly known as Bar Advocates, who accept cases through CPCS. Although Bar Advocates are an essential part of the CPCS system, they are independent contractors and would not receive collective-bargaining rights under Question 2.
The distinction became especially important during the public-defense crisis that began in May 2025. At the time, Bar Advocates were paid only $65 an hour for District Court cases, while also paying for their own office expenses, malpractice insurance, health insurance, and other professional costs. They could not bill for all of the time required to operate their practices. Bar Advocates estimated that a lawyer relying primarily on this work could net only about $42,000 before taxes, based on their assumptions about billable hours and expenses. By any measure, this compensation rate is abysmally low for such important public service work.
Beginning May 27, 2025, many Bar Advocates, particularly in Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, stopped accepting new appointments to seek higher compensation. The resulting shortage left thousands of defendants awaiting counsel and triggered the Supreme Judicial Court’s Lavallee protocol. Under that protocol, defendants held for more than seven days without an attorney can be released, and charges against defendants who remain without counsel for more than 45 days can be dismissed without prejudice (meaning charges can be refiled later).
According to a June 2026 report by Massachusetts Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro, more than 9,000 unrepresented defendants were reported during the crisis. Courts conducted more than 2,300 Lavallee hearings, resulting in 1,689 cases being dismissed without prejudice and 213 defendants being released from custody. Some dismissed cases involved serious charges, although prosecutors were permitted to, and in many instances did, refile them.
The Legislature responded in August 2025 by increasing compensation for private appointed attorneys by $20 an hour over two years and providing funding for a major expansion of CPCS’s salaried staff. As of August 1, 2026, the statutory rate is $85 an hour for District Court cases, $105 for Superior Court non-homicide cases, and $140 for homicide cases.
The 2026 Inspector General report nevertheless concluded that Massachusetts’ indigent-defense system continues to have serious structural problems. The IG criticized CPCS for failing to meet the Legislature’s requirement that staff attorneys handle at least 20 percent of indigent cases and called for changes to caseloads, oversight, eligibility screening, and private-attorney compensation. CPCS strongly disputed parts of that analysis, arguing that raw caseload numbers do not adequately account for case complexity, staffing needs, or the constitutional requirement to provide effective representation. The dispute underscores a larger point: Massachusetts’ public-defense system depends on recruiting and retaining qualified attorneys and other professionals enough to provide constitutionally adequate representation.
Advocates for Question 2 note that public defenders in New York, Hartford, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit are all unionized. Massachusetts, in comparison, languishes alongside states like Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Maintaining a robust legal defense system requires attracting and retaining qualified attorneys. Too often, however, new law school graduates leave Massachusetts to seek employment in states with better compensation systems. In addition, the current CPCS system of staff attorneys and Bar Advocates is overburdened and cannot provide all the critical services needed here.
CPCS attempted to unionize three times, in 1979, 1993, and 2015. Each time, labor boards told organizers that they could not organize without a change in state law, granting the right to collectively bargain. State legislators have considered bills to recognize the right to unionize six times (2013, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025) but the legislation stalled and was never brought to a vote. This year, more than 100,000 signatures from Massachusetts voters are getting Question 2 on the November ballot.
What Question 2 would change
CPCS employees have sought collective-bargaining rights for years. Unlike most employees covered by Massachusetts’ public-sector labor law, CPCS employees have historically been outside the statutory framework that allows public employees to organize and bargain collectively. Previous attempts by CPCS employees to obtain recognition under existing labor law were rejected because CPCS was not included as a covered public employer.
Question 2 would change that. It would allow eligible CPCS employees—including attorneys and other professional and support staff—to organize and collectively bargain with CPCS over employment conditions.
Supporters of Question 2, including labor leaders, argue that giving CPCS employees a collective voice could improve recruitment and retention, provide greater stability in compensation and working conditions, and strengthen an agency responsible for protecting the legal rights of hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents. The ballot measure itself, however, does not set salaries, guarantee raises, or change the compensation paid to private bar advocates.
Learn More
Public defenders, facing abysmal pay, attempt to unionize, Boston Globe, 7/2/15
Massachusetts private attorneys, seeking pay raise, refuse criminal defense work, WBUR, 5/27/25
Public defenders in Massachusetts and other states demand a pay raise, NPR, 8/5/25
SJC says out of bar advocate push for pay raise, defers to Legislature, Boston Globe, 3/16/26
Mass. watchdog calls public defense system ‘broken’, GBH, 6/10/26
Millions owned to criminal trial experts in Massachusetts will now be paid, 6/12/26
Progressive Mass Ballot Question 2 Information
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