Employment Law Attorney jobs in District of Columbia

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) seeks a dynamic, experienced, and skilled person to join our Work Quality team as a Staff Attorney or Senior Staff Attorney to advance NELP’s programs and policy campaigns. You will join a team of experts who are working to build worker power and fundamental rights by fighting to raise job standards, enforce hard-won workers’ rights, and support racial equity. This is an extraordinary opportunity to leverage your talent and join a team that ensures worker-driven policies are at the forefront of current and future worker rights in the U.S. labor market.

Who We Are

Founded in 1969, the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a leading advocacy organization with the mission to build a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Together with local, state, and national partners, NELP advances its mission through transformative legal and policy solutions, research, capacity building, and communications. Our victories over the last decade have impacted the lives of an estimated 100 million workers and their families. We lead and collaborate in fights for higher pay and just benefits, secure and safe jobs, and support at each stage in a worker’s life. For more information, read our annual reports and explore our website: www.nelp.org

NELP has a team of 55 staff people based across offices in New York City, Washington D.C., and Berkeley, CA, with an 11-person Board of Directors, an annual budget of $17M-$20M, and hundreds of partners in the field with whom we work to further our mission.

What You Will Do

You may be based in any of NELP’s three office locations and will report to the Director of Work Quality. You will work in conjunction with NELP’s staff of lawyers, policy experts, researchers, and strategic communications experts. You will work with grassroots organizing groups and reformers to design, promote and ensure the successful implementation of laws that will respond to eroding labor standards, rising income and wealth inequality, persistent structural racism and occupational segregation, and the shifting of power away from workers and toward corporations. Your work will include supporting the following:

• Building opportunities for strategic engagement between worker-led organizations and federal, state, and local agencies to ensure consistent, community-based, and directed public enforcement of hard-won workplace protections so that the gains and protections of laws on the books are actually realized in workers’ lives.
• Developing new strategies and support ongoing worker campaigns to improve enforcement of core workplace standards to combat the rise in workers who are not paid what they are owed, endure unsafe workplaces, or face retaliation when trying to organize or assert their basic rights.
• Fighting back against the rollbacks of core labor and employment rights at the federal, state, and local levels, and eliminating loopholes that exclude immigrants, people of color, and other workers from core workplace protections.
• Developing policies and providing campaign support to ongoing worker campaigns to raise labor standards at the federal, state and local levels.
• Deepening our racial equity framework and approaches, through cross-team participation, analysis of policies, and partnerships with state and local partners.

You will be responsible for the following:

• Engaging in multi-faceted efforts leveraging legal and policy expertise, strategic communications, and an extensive network of stakeholders to ensure partners have legal, policy, and strategic support for campaigns across the country.
• Leading local and state advocacy in key policy priority areas, as described above in the Work Quality portfolio, by engaging key constituencies, allied organizations, policymakers, and federal, state, and local agency staff.
• Providing legal, policy, and strategic support to federal, state, and local partners and for campaigns across the country, including drafting model legislation, policy briefs, and legal analyses.
• Drafting amicus briefs and supporting strategic litigation related to Work Quality issues described above.
• Representing NELP in advocacy coalitions, public forums, legislative and agency hearings, and in the media.
• Drafting reports, op-eds, blogs, and educational materials, and engaging in strategic communications.
• Supporting a workplace culture where all team members grow and develop professionally.
• Actively contributing to NELP’s work in becoming an anti-racist organization that reflects and embodies internally the values of dignity, justice, equity, and inclusion.

Who You Are

• You have a minimum of four years’ legal and/or policy advocacy experience to advance economic and/or racial justice. Your experience in labor law, employment law and/or organizing is especially welcome.
• You have a JD and are licensed to practice law in the jurisdiction where the position is located or will be licensed in that jurisdiction.
• You are skilled at conducting high-quality and thorough legal and policy research and analysis.
• You are a skilled oral and written communicator, with a demonstrated ability to create compelling and digestible work products such as reports, op-eds, and/or issue briefs; and are skilled in presenting, testifying, and/or engaging with the media.
• You are a relationship-builder. You have strong interpersonal skills, enjoy connecting individuals, and have a track record of developing and maintaining alliances.
• You have a proven track record of working in coalition with groups, such as community-based organizations, legal, labor, and worker centers.
• You have strong project management skills. You are a strategic and clear-headed thinker and doer, have experience managing multiple projects, overseeing, and tracking details, and a track record of achieving timely results.
• You have strong racial equity competencies and center your role in an analysis and understanding of how race and power shape systems in our society and culture and you are continuously learning, reflecting, and growing; you foster trust and transparency across lines of difference by listening deeply, and offer direct, honest feedback with compassion and clarity of purpose.
• You are self-aware, curious, and respectful with strong interpersonal skills fostering a sense of purpose and community and have high standards for holding yourself and others accountable.
• You operate with a commitment to excellence, integrity, diplomacy, and camaraderie.

Start Date, Location, Compensation and Benefits:  This position is based out of one of our three offices (Berkeley, New York City, or Washington D.C.). Staff may be located a commutable distance from one of the three offices. NELP has a hybrid model that requires staff to work in-person at least six days per month, with the option of in-person or remote work the remainder of the time. This hybrid model seeks to leverage both the benefits of working with colleagues in-person and the benefits of flexible remote arrangements. This position will require some travel, including for NELP internal meetings or conferences. The start date will be as soon as possible.

This position is in NELP’s bargaining unit, represented by National Organization of Legal Service Workers, UAW Local 2320. Classification and compensation for NELP bargaining unit positions are commensurate with relevant experience and education and based on NELP’s collectively bargained scales. Based on our union scale, a staff attorney salary is $82,610-$91,900 and a senior staff attorney salary is $95,220-$120,640. Here are some examples of salaries:

• with a JD and 4 years’ post-graduate relevant experience, the staff attorney salary will be $91,900;
• with a JD and 6 years’ post-graduate relevant experience, the senior staff attorney salary will be $97,970; and
• with a JD and 8 years’ post-graduate relevant experience, the senior staff attorney salary will be $103,690.

The designation of “senior” and differences in salaries are based on education and years of relevant experience. Compensation at NELP includes an excellent comprehensive benefits package, including full coverage of family health insurance, a medical reimbursement plan, generous vacation and sick leave, plus additional organization-wide holidays, significant contribution from employer to a retirement plan (both an unelected contribution and employer match); and for qualifying participants, up to 26 weeks paid parental leave, 12 weeks paid medical leave, 6 weeks of paid family medical caregiving leave, a sabbatical leave program, childcare/eldercare reimbursement assistance, and student loan repayment assistance.

To Apply: Candidates must be eligible and authorized to work in the United States. Go to our online application system at https://nelp.bamboohr.com/careers to submit a cover letter and resume. If you have questions regarding this announcement, please forward those to nelp@nelp.org, noting the job title in the subject line. No phone calls or other email inquiries please. We will consider applications on a rolling basis; interested applicants are encouraged to submit sooner than later.

NELP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and an equal opportunity, fair chance, affirmative action employer, committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce.  All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military status, prior record of arrest or conviction, citizenship status, current employment status, or caregiver status.