{"id":1011643,"date":"2026-08-19T23:13:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1011643\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T23:13:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:13:17","slug":"nyc-at-risk-youth-nonprofit-faces-contempt-charges-over-delaying-first-union-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1011643\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC at-risk youth nonprofit faces contempt charges over delaying first union contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal labor regulators filed contempt charges<\/a> against Covenant House New York for continuing to refuse to bargain with its employee union a year after a federal judge ordered the homeless services nonprofit to cooperate.<\/p>\n

The legal filing is the latest in an escalating battle between the shelter for homeless youth and its employee union, an affiliate of the large healthcare union 1199SEIU.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Covenant House staff numbering around 190 workers at its Manhattan and the Bronx locations voted to unionize in 2022. In the four years since, the nonprofit has dug in its heels and refused to bargain in good faith, according to the National Labor Relations Board\u2019s findings. The nonprofit did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The union has argued that the Covenant House\u2019s resistance to negotiations are anomalous for an organization that provides social services to at-risk youth largely through public support. A vast majority of Covenant House\u2019s revenue \u2014 nearly $23 million per year \u2014 comes from government funding, according to its 2025 financial records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1199SEIU Executive Vice President Leigh Howard said that Covenant House\u2019s strategy seems to be aimed at dragging the process out for as long as they can in the hope that the members will get tired and give up on the union.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis is the same type of tactic that we see in corporate campaigns all the time \u2014 Amazon, Starbucks, right?\u201d Howard told amNew York Law. \u201cIn this case, Covenant House has hired an attorney whose job is to not get a contract and they\u2019ve come up with the most bizarre forms of stalling that I\u2019ve seen. It\u2019s not typical at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

About a year ago, U.S. Southern District of New York Judge Ronnie Abrams issued a preliminary injunction against Covenant House ordering the nonprofit to bargain in good faith, stop illegally threatening its employees for engaging in union activity, and provide the union internal information, as mandated by federal labor law.<\/p>\n

This type of relief has become increasingly rare from the NLRB under the Trump administration and is usually reserved for cases the agency finds to be particularly urgent.<\/p>\n

Covenant House appealed the injunction. Its management has since been going through the motions of regularly meeting with workers over the last year as mandated by the order but it has yet to propose a complete contract, according to Howard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Management has also raised issues during the bargaining meetings that to the union seem trivial, complaining that members were typing on a computer in a way that it argued was tantamount to transcribing the proceedings, which is prohibited.<\/p>\n

Up until the injunction last year, the Covenant House argued that its refusal to bargain was justified because two employees on the union\u2019s bargaining committee were supervisory employees that it argued should be excluded from the bargaining unit.<\/p>\n

After the injunction was issued the full NLRB, a neutral quasi-judicial body, agreed<\/a> with the union that the two employees were not supervisory because neither possessed independent discretion to set or alter organizational policies or control terms of employment.<\/p>\n

In that determination, the labor board found that Covenant House CEO Shakeema North-Albert forbade one of the employees whose union eligibility was being challenged from communicating with the union 1199 or he would be suspended without pay.<\/p>\n

As part of the contempt order the NLRB said they will be seeking damages but has not yet clarified how much those damages will be. Howard said that no matter what happens with the contempt motion, the union\u2019s goal will stay the same: make progress towards a first contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a profit-driven company, this is an organization that is fighting its employees that do the work every day, fighting their right to have a collective bargaining agreement. It\u2019s really unconscionable,\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal labor regulators filed contempt charges against Covenant House New York for continuing to refuse to bargain with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1011644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,404895,405,403,5226,5225,291177,5228,5227,15742,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1011643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-covenant-house-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-nlrb","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-union","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117124714093671573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}