Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network

Rise Up, which Launched on April 16, was created through the collaborative efforts of the AFL-CIO, AFGE and other federal sector unions, Civic Nation and its project We The Action, Democracy Forward and its project Civil Service Strong, and a host of democracy-related NGOs, including Partnership for Public Service, American Constitution Society, National Lawyers Guild, Leadership conference on Civil and Human rights, and others. These organizations understood that one of the first targets of the current administration would be the federal government itself and its civil servants, without whom a democracy cannot flourish. Rise Up complements the important impact litigation undertaken by our allies. We have a "retail" model of delivery in which we connect terminated federal workers, or federal workers who have employment concerns, primarily as a result of the decimation of the feeral government, with volunteer lawyers. These lawyers, whom we train, provide a one-hour consultation to individual workers to help them understand their rights and map out their legal options . We refer them to lawyers who may be able to represent them on an ongoing basis if they so desire. We have 2500 workers who have come to us for assistance, and 1300 lawyers who have volunteered. We anticipate that the niumber of workers who register with Rise Up will increase now that the Supreme Court has allowed the administration to proceed with its "reorganization" plans.

Our work empowers the civil servants on whom we depend, and who have been treated so cruelly. In addition, by working closely with the unions that represent many of the workers we serve, we aim to strengthen the federal sector unions tha tthe administration has tried to decimate.

We have developed a strategy that combines some of the key elements of “volunteer management” efforts found in political campaigns or projects intended to recruit lawyers for individual pro bono assignments with initiatives tailored to our volunteer pool. We The Action has conducted our email communications to lawyer volunteers on our behalf since Rise Up’s inception and will continue to do so through the end of July.

We engage our lawyers in the Rise Up system by sending weekly email communications to segmented groups of volunteers (active, less active, inactive) to persuade each group to do more. We have recently begun calling through to groups of lawyers to encourage them to step up their involvement in the Network. In addition, we conduct regular training, both on the basics and on more specific topics, such as Reductions in Force and have recently revised our training video. We recently held a meeting for lawyers who have done screenings but not consultations to try to make them feel more comfortable with moving up the “engagement ladder.” We have also purchased a blanket malpractice insurance policy to cover work that volunteers perform.

We have recently developed a new approach to consultations: a Zoom virtual legal clinic in which volunteer lawyers provide consultations and that also provides immediate support to our volunteers to make them more comfortable with providing advice and guidance. During the virtual legal clinic, volunteer lawyers meet with workers in individual breakout rooms to provide two individual consultations in a three hour timeframe. During the clinic experienced federal sector labor lawyers are available to consult with any volunteer who needs to have a question answered. Our first “virtual legal clinic” was held at the end of June and delivered consultations to over 30 workers. Feedback from the volunteer lawyers was uniformly positive.

Although we are young, we know we can fulfil our mission. We are here to stay as long as the attacks on our democracy and on the civil service continue.