Supervising Attorney, Workers’ Rights

Department: Workers’ Rights Program

Reports to: Chief Programs Officer

Location: Fully remote within California. Candidate must reside in California and hold active California Bar admission.

Salary Range: $85,000–$115,000 annually, depending on experience.

The Opportunity

You’ve represented workers. Handled the hard cases. Learned when to fight, when to negotiate, and when a client’s situation calls for a solution nobody has tried yet.

Maybe you’ve also started doing something else: mentoring the newer attorney, leading the complicated case, building a partnership, launching a project, becoming the person colleagues call when they’re stuck.

You don’t need to have held the title of Supervising Attorney to be ready to become one.

Farm workers are 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than the rest of the U.S. workforce, and agriculture doesn’t run without them. Legal protections for them should not lag this far behind.

UFW Foundation is building its Workers’ Rights Program, and we’re looking for an attorney ready to help lead it. You’ll represent workers while helping build the systems, partnerships, legal strategies, and team that can carry this program forward for years to come.

This isn’t about inheriting someone else’s playbook. It’s about writing a new playbook.

Leadership Can Look Different

We aren’t only looking for someone who has already held the title “Supervising Attorney.” Leadership might mean you have:

• Built or launched a project, clinic, fellowship initiative, campaign, or program.
• Led complex litigation or taken significant ownership of a caseload.
• Mentored fellows, interns, law students, paralegals, or newer attorneys.
• Developed a new legal strategy or approach to serving clients.
• Built trusted relationships with worker centers, community organizations, or advocacy partners.
• Become the person colleagues rely on for judgment, strategy, training, or guidance.
• Seen something that needed to exist and helped create it.

If that sounds like you, we want to hear from you.

About UFW Foundation

For nearly 20 years, the UFW Foundation has worked to ensure that every farm worker and immigrant has the opportunity to live and work with dignity, safety, and respect. That work now spans two fronts. On one front, we run one of the largest federally accredited immigration legal services programs in California, standing between families and a system that’s separating them faster than courts can hear their cases. On the other front, we’re building a Workers’ Rights program to confront wage theft, unsafe heat, and retaliation head-on. Farm workers are 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than the rest of the U.S. workforce. That is exactly the kind of gap we exist to close. Both programs are growing right now to meet a moment that demands it, from active litigation challenging a federal wage cut in court to public testimony documenting the human cost of immigration enforcement. Across California, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Washington, that’s what a farm worker or immigrant family can expect from us: dignity, safety, and respect, backed by lawyers who show up.

How We Work

• Remote: This is a remote position with an opportunity to work from one of our California offices, for those within commuting distance. Candidates must reside in California and maintain active California Bar membership in good standing.
• Travel: Regular travel within California is required for hearings, worksites, community events, partner organizations, trainings, and other program needs. Some evening and weekend availability may be required for community events.
• Team: You report to the Chief Programs Officer and will help build and develop the Workers’ Rights team as the program grows.

What You’ll Do

What follows are the core responsibilities of this role. This isn’t a complete list; casework shifts with client needs, court schedules, and whatever the organization needs most in a given season.

Casework & Litigation

• Oversee a docket of cases, including individual actions, class actions, and amicus briefs to enforce labor standards.
• Handle individual representation for wage theft, workplace retaliation, misclassification, and sexual harassment, in administrative proceedings (wage claims, unemployment, OSHA, retaliation) and in state or federal court.
• Conduct intake interviews, assess client needs, and give clients a clear analysis of their case, relief options, and next steps.
• Investigate employer policies and practices that violate wage, safety, or health protections.
• Identify systemic violations suitable for class actions, amicus work, or policy engagement, and analyze proposed legislation and enforcement policy affecting worker protections.

Build the Practice & Partnerships

• Design and operationalize protocols for a legal services program that is being built and expanded.
• Own funder reporting, program metrics, and case management data quality for grant compliance.
• Build and strengthen relationships with worker centers, grassroots organizations, and other nonprofit partners.

Lead, Mentor & Build the Team

• Supervise and mentor a growing regional team of attorneys, legal assistants, and fellows, reviewing work product before filing.
• Distribute and monitor caseload across the team, maintaining a consistent quality and compliance standard.
• Recruit, train, and mentor pro bono and low-bono attorneys to take on cases.
• Provide training and technical assistance to the team and coordinate with the Chief Programs Officer.
• Identify patterns across cases, including shifts in government agency practices, and translate them into advocacy or program adjustments.

What You Bring

• Active California Bar membership, in good standing.
• Minimum 3 years of workers’ rights experience (5 years preferred).
• Valid driver’s license and reliable vehicle access for regional travel.
• Previous formal supervisory experience is welcome, but it is not the only way to demonstrate leadership. UFW Foundation is interested in attorneys who have shown initiative, judgment, ownership, mentorship, and the ability to help other people succeed.

Nice to Have

• Functional bilingual proficiency in Spanish and English, sufficient to conduct a client intake or explain legal options directly without an interpreter.
• Experience building, launching, or substantially redesigning a legal services program or initiative from the ground up.
• Experience identifying systemic violations suitable for class actions, amicus work, or policy engagement.
• Experience owning funder reporting, program metrics, or grant compliance data.
• Track record building relationships with worker centers, grassroots organizations, or pro bono networks.

UFW Foundation weighs lived experience, being an immigrant, farmworker, or low-wage worker, or growing up in a mixed-status household, alongside professional legal experience. If that is part of how you found your way to this work, we want to hear about it.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $85,000–$115,000 annually, depending on experience, with yearly increases tied to individual, team, and organizational performance.
• Health coverage: medical, dental, and vision, with the majority of premiums paid by UFW Foundation and pre-taxed.
• Retirement: the Juan de la Cruz Pension Plan (automatic enrollment, guaranteed 6.5% interest), a 403(b) with a 2% dollar-for-dollar match after 90 days provided employees contribute a minimum of 2% of their annual salary, and a Fidelity 401(k) available from your date of hire.
• Time off: 2–4 weeks of vacation depending on tenure, 16 paid holidays including a floating personal day, 6 paid sick days, 1 mental health day, and 5 days of bereavement leave per immediate family member.
• Support: a no-cost Employee Assistance Program, free access to thousands of professional development courses, and a 20% discount on immigration services for you and your family.

Equal Opportunity

The UFW Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe a strong commitment to equal employment opportunity is more than a legal and moral obligation – it is also a sound business practice to realize the potential of every individual. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for all! Employment decisions at the UFW Foundation will be based on merit, qualifications, and abilities. Except where required or permitted by law, employment practices will not be influenced or affected by an applicant’s or employee’s race, color, religion, sex/gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, ancestry, disability, genetic information, age, or any characteristic protected by law.

We encourage all qualified applicants to apply for a position fighting for farm worker and immigrant communities! The UFW Foundation believes in second chances. As an organization, we will rely on individualized assessments in the hiring of those with past criminal convictions. The UFW Foundation will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act unless doing so would result in an undue hardship. Persons of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, persons with disabilities, persons who have lived in poverty, formerly incarcerated persons, persons 40 years old or older, and people fluent in more than one language are strongly encouraged to apply for open positions with the UFW Foundation.

This policy governs all aspects of employment, including selection, job assignment, compensation, counseling, discipline, termination, access to benefits and training. Our commitment to equal opportunity employment applies to all persons involved in our operations and prohibits unlawful discrimination by any employee, including supervisors and co-workers.

This search is being conducted by QuantumPath on behalf of the UFW Foundation. If you need an accommodation during the application process, contact kim@quantumpath.us.

Don’t Screen Yourself Out

Don’t meet every qualification listed? We still want to hear from you. We are looking for passionate, fierce attorneys with strong legal judgment, a commitment to workers’ rights, and the ambition to lead. Your leadership may have happened through a fellowship, litigation, an organizing partnership, a clinic, a project, a campaign, or a mentorship role rather than a formal management title. If your experience has prepared you to take on greater responsibility, even if your current title hasn’t caught up yet, tell us what you’ve built, led, or changed. We encourage you to apply.

• Health coverage: medical, dental, and vision, with the majority of premiums paid by UFW Foundation and pre-taxed.
• Retirement: the Juan de la Cruz Pension Plan (automatic enrollment, guaranteed 6.5% interest), a 403(b) with a 2% dollar-for-dollar match after 90 days provided employees contribute a minimum of 2% of their annual salary, and a Fidelity 401(k) available from your date of hire.
• Time off: 2–4 weeks of vacation depending on tenure, 16 paid holidays including a floating personal day, 6 paid sick days, 1 mental health day, and 5 days of bereavement leave per immediate family member.
• Support: a no-cost Employee Assistance Program, free access to thousands of professional development courses, and a 20% discount on immigration services for you and your family.

Ideal to Have: Functional bilingual proficiency in Spanish and English, sufficient to conduct a client intake or explain legal options directly without an interpreter.