The owning partners of the Northampton immigration law firm Curran, Berger and Kludt (CBK), which represents thousands of individuals as well as large institutions like universities, informed their 41 employees on July 12 that the firm would be closing this August.
An email sent to staff by managing partner and attorney Megan Kludt that morning informed employees that this closure was due to Kludt and fellow partner Dan Berger moving on to other opportunities. Kludt referenced an unnamed “new professional opportunity” while Berger has decided to leave the firm in her absence, refocusing on both his ongoing position at Cornell Law School and work with the Biden Administration regarding the President’s Initiative for Dreamers.
While thanking the workers for their time and work at the firm, the partners announced that all hourly staff would be laid off on July 31, with the potential for a few employees to stay on through August 15 to “assist with winding down client business.”
This announcement comes on the heels of multiple bargaining sessions between the partners and Legal Workers for Immigrant Solidarity (LWIS), a branch of UAW Local 2322 which has represented the firm’s workers since 2021. The now years-long campaign for a first contract ramped up this spring, when the union considered a strike vote after being unable to find a compromise on issues relating to wages for legal and front desk staff, healthcare premium percentages paid by the employer, and the possibility of positions being eliminated and union employees replaced by subcontracted workers.
Maisie Kaiser, a team lead and senior paralegal who is part of the LWIS bargaining committee, said she found the news “strange and surprising” but that she couldn’t claim that it was a result of the ongoing bargaining.
“I genuinely don’t think anyone had any idea other than the partners until early last week,” said Kaiser. “We know that it’s not exactly a result of the strike authorization vote that we took, because they had already told the case managers they were closing the firm by the time we let them know the results of that vote.”
Before the closure notification, the union’s next bargaining session was set to be Thursday, July 19, but after the news broke to the workers, this bargaining session’s topic switched to a discussion of severance pay and benefits following the mass layoff.
In an email from CBK’s Human Resources (HR) Director on July 16, four days after the closure announcement, employees learned that the firm planned to offer no severance pay and to discontinue health and dental insurance on their last day of employment.
One employee — a team lead and senior paralegal who requested anonymity — told The Shoestring that the firm only recently allowed her to add her partner to her health insurance on July 3, nine days before she was informed of the layoffs. She says that when she spoke to HR about her specific situation, she was told that the cost of continuing benefits via COBRA would be $1,410.85 per month.
“We have some major health medical things that are coming up, and we’re at a standstill. I now have to try and figure out all these different health care options,” they said. “It just seems wild to me that we mean so little to them. I’m going to have to pay for COBRA or take a gamble and probably still have to pay for a bunch of stuff out of pocket.”
In an email to The Shoestring on July 19, Kludt stated that “unfortunately, CBK is not in a financial position to provide severance or extended healthcare beyond the employment end date. We are in discussions with the union about potential assistance in the future if the firm closes in a better position than expected.” Berger did not respond to a request for comment.
Prior to Thursday’s bargaining session, Patrick Burke, President of UAW 2322, explained that once the firm mentioned an explicit lack of funds, they would be required to share financial information with the union to prove their inability to provide further benefits.
“We never got the impression during the negotiations we’ve had with CBK that they didn’t have money,” Burke said. “They were always very reluctant to ever share financial information with the union. Technically, an employer can basically refuse to provide detailed financial information if they don’t claim that they can’t afford the union’s proposal.”
But following direct claims during the bargaining session, the firm is now required to share proof of finances. As of the publication of this article, the union members have not reported receiving these financial documents, though they expect to see them soon. Members of the bargaining committee told The Shoestring that during Thursday’s meeting, the partners promised that if they were able to come up with extra funds, those funds would be split three ways between general staff, managerial staff, and the two partners themselves.
While Thursday’s bargaining session led to the new question of finances, other questions about the fate of the firm’s active cases remained unaddressed.
“There are still client meetings on the calendar and they’re still sending out emails with plans for cases about filing things that take months to do,” said Sarah Brown-Anson, an Immigration Specialist at CBK, when she spoke to The Shoestring on July 19. “It’s very confusing for people who are working through that. We don’t know why.”
In Kludt’s email to The Shoestring, she stated that the firm “started informing clients of the closure individually on July 12, the same day that we informed the employees.”
“This has been a careful, individualized process, and unfortunately, we were not able to communicate with everyone before the [Daily Hampshire Gazette] article came out,” Kludt continued. “The attorneys here have spent the week in client conversations.”
Employees told The Shoestring that since the article’s publication on Thursday, they have still been fielding questions from surprised clients after seeing the Gazette’s coverage, and prior to the article’s release, many didn’t know the clients had been informed at all.
“It’s been really difficult to continue working and communicating with clients that everything is fine because a lot of us feel like it’s not entirely honest,” said Kaiser on July 16. “Of course, that’s not really our place to tell people, I guess.”
The Shoestring was not able to reach any clients of CBK for comment prior to publication.
While the union waits for further proof of the firm’s financial inability pay severance, multiple employees mentioned feeling as though the firm was committed to a “performative” public image of social justice, while actions within the workplace left employees feeling undervalued, particularly when learning about the state of their benefits.
Several employees mentioned an email sent around the firm in March, referencing Kludt’s position as managing partner at a “women-led firm,” which one staffer acknowledged employed only four men out of a staff of 41.
“It was about how CBK is a woman-owned firm, and we’re so proud to celebrate International Women’s Day,” said Kaiser. “And I was just thinking about how profoundly anti-woman it is to lay off all the women that work for you who have people that they need to take care of. It’s an almost entirely women-run bargaining unit, and a lot of people are caregivers for kids or their older parents.”
“It’s literally impossible to start another job when you find out that you’re being laid off in two weeks,” said Brown-Anson. “It’s just impossible to have continuity. People are trying to support their families.”
Brown-Anson said that when she started being involved in the union, she just wanted jobs at the firm to be “high quality jobs that give people security in their life and give people the opportunity to have a family and a stable household.”
“I guess my thought in getting this news was that they truly didn’t get that idea, and they don’t share it,” Brown-Anson said. “Because if they cared about families with members working at CBK, they wouldn’t lay people off with two weeks’ notice.”
Update: This story was updated on Sept. 26, 2024, to honor the request of a worker who asked that their named be removed from the article. The Shoestring editorial team considers such requests on a case-by-case basis.
R. Nicholas is a former editor and labor reporter for The Shoestring, covering union drives and the local service industry.
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R. Nicholas is a former editor and staff labor reporter of The Shoestring. He is currently a freelance journalist residing in Amherst, MA.
