Employees at two of New York City’s most prominent reentry nonprofits are pushing to make the missions they promote to the public apply on the inside as well. On May 1, staff at The Fortune Society and Osborne Association delivered letters to their organization’s leadership announcing that they wish to form unions with the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153.
As Fortune Workers United and Osborne Workers United, workers say they will push for living wages, stronger workplace protections, and for the chance to have a meaningful say in how services are delivered to New Yorkers who are coming home from terms of incarceration.
Fortune and Osborne employees work in offices and on housing sites, at courthouses, and inside jails and prisons, helping justice-impacted people navigate housing, employment, benefits, treatment, and reunification with family. Workers at both nonprofits say some staff are former clients — or have lived experience with incarceration themselves — and that the strain they feel on the job can ripple outward, affecting the stability and the quality of care participants receive.
Founded in 1967, The Fortune Society is a New York City nonprofit known for combining direct services with advocacy for alternatives to incarceration. Osborne Association, founded in 1933, is one of the state’s largest providers of direct services for people affected by incarceration, combining programming with system-reform advocacy. Now, workers at both organizations say the values they promote publicly — dignity, equity, and safety — need to be extended to staff as well.
In their letters to the leaders of Fortune and Osborne, workers at both organizations emphasized that the job itself isn’t the problem; it’s ineffective job structures. At Fortune, the letter framed unionizing as a way to protect both staff and the people they serve. “We love our work at Fortune. Every day we get to support New Yorkers returning home so that they can have access to housing, education, healthcare, and employment,” said G. Etoniru, a grant writer at Fortune Society. “We do everything we can to support our clients. Yet we, the workers at Fortune, many of whom are impacted by the criminal legal system and have been past participants at Fortune, often don’t have the pay, benefits and respect we need to survive in NYC. How can we effectively support our clients when we aren’t provided the resources to care for ourselves?”
The Fortune letter noted that many employees have lived experience in the criminal legal system — and want a stronger voice in decisions that shape the day-to-day services they deliver. Caleb Knight, a creative arts senior associate at Fortune Society, told the Amsterdam News that the push for a union is fueled by what he described as rapid growth at the top and stagnation for frontline staff. “Well, really the biggest thing I think is that Fortune, even in the two years that I’ve been here, has grown by $20 million in its annual budget. So we’re now a $90 million agency. But we have staff being paid totally unlivable wages. We have people making $45,000 or less a year as full-time employees in New York City.
“And as I think is probably true of a lot of nonprofits, Fortune continues to take on contracts with new promises of outcomes and programming without also hiring the appropriate staff to make sure that those outcomes really happen. So it’s kind of a combination of people basically continuing to have more and more and more added to their plate, while at the same time, we don’t even have cost of living adjustments happening on a yearly basis.”
He pointed to the numbers staff are carrying. “I know from talking to case managers that people are looking at caseloads of like a hundred-plus people, which is insane,” Knight said. He also described a security change that he said was implemented without meaningful input: “We now have pretty obtrusive metal detectors at the entrance points of all of our buildings,” a decision he said has left some participants feeling they are being pulled back into “aspects of the carceral system again.” And he recalled a recent period when Fortune ran out of transit cards: “As an agency, we ran out entirely for four or five weeks,” leaving staff to “entirely bear the fallout” when court-mandated participants could not get to programming.
In the May 1 letter to Fortune interim CEO Rob De Leon, Fortune Workers United argued that a union contract could address “income inequality, protection against harassment, and job security.” They also asked leadership, “to enter into a neutrality, card check, and access agreement,” writing: “We respectfully ask you to respond to our request by May 7 at 5:00 p.m. EST.”
Similarly, in the letter employees sent to Osborne Associates, workers told leadership they see unionizing as an extension of the organization’s stated values. “As staff, we are committed to Osborne’s transformational work,” their letter reads. “Every day, we provide services and programming that create opportunities for healing and change, we advocate for clients as they navigate a broken justice system, and we fight at every level of government for policies rooted in community safety, anti-racism, and liberation.
“As impacted and allied staff, we believe we can better serve this work through the formation of a union…we are eager to take this step to sustain and care for our workers and protect our rights, so that we may better serve our clients and our communities today and in the future.”
Nicole Matthews, a career coordinator at Osborne, said in an interview that the organizing is about more than pay — though she acknowledged money matters — because the work depends on clear processes and support. “There needs to be a union for several reasons. For one reason, what I’m finding is that the structure of things isn’t necessarily clear,” she said. “You come in, get a week worth of training, and then you figure it out from there, which is ridiculous in my eyes, because you’re literally dealing with people’s livelihood.”
For Osborne workers, the push for structure and accountability is a central demand. Osborne Workers United asked management to “follow through” on what their letter describes as a prior assurance that staff have the right to unionize, and requested leadership enter “into a card check neutrality agreement, following New York City Local Law 87/2021, which requires Labor Peace Agreements for Human Services contractors.” The letter asks Osborne to respond by May 15, 2026.
The organizing at the nonprofits has also gotten the attention of elected officials. In a May 1 letter to Fortune and Osborne leaders, some 10 City Council Members wrote that they “understand that workers at Fortune and Osborne have expressed a clear desire to form a union, which we fully support their right to do so without any interference, intimidation, or delay.”
The council members noted that Fortune and Osborne receive substantial funding from the city and said that, “Supporting their right to unionize is not just a matter of fairness, but an investment in the long-term strength and sustainability of the organizations and our communities.”
Fortune and Osborne workers say they don’t expect their conflict with management to lead to a strike or a long fight. They are asking for a written process that would let organizing move forward quickly and with minimal disruption to programs. So far, a spokesperson from Fortune has stated that “The Fortune Society received a request from a union to represent certain employees of the organization. We are working on responding to this request. As always, we will act with the best interests of our staff in mind, and in compliance with all legal obligations.” And a spokesperson for Osborne issued a statement saying, “Osborne Association recognizes the right of workers to unionize and will participate in good-faith discussions. We will listen to their demands and do all we can to support our staff as they continue providing critical services and advocacy on behalf of people impacted by incarceration.”
If management signs on, the next step would be bargaining. Fortune workers wrote that unionizing would address “income inequality, protection against harassment, and job security.” Knight and Matthews described how that could also show up in day-to-day operations: caseload expectations, training, standard procedures, and having “an assured seat at the table” before decisions — like security changes or program supports — roll out. Matthews put it this way: “If we had the proper support, the care that we need to give will be instead of 100% and be at 150 or 200%.”