Updated at 12:16 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 10

Staff at the Lawrence Community Shelter announced Monday that they intend to form a labor union and will be joining CWA Local 6400, the union that represents hourly school staff in the Lawrence school district.

They have asked Lawrence Community Shelter management to voluntarily recognize their union, according to a news release Monday evening from Hannah Allison-Natale.

“We are building a powerful union of public sector and non-profit workers who support and care for the poor and vulnerable in our society,” Allison-Natale said in her release. “We are excited to welcome the workers of Lawrence Community Shelter into our union local. We are ready to fight together for good working conditions for all workers and high quality public services for all!”

Allison-Natale told the Journal-World on Tuesday that the group was “hopeful” that management would voluntarily recognize the union, “but if not we will go to an election.”

She said she believed that 31 staff members are eligible to become part of the shelter union.

As the Journal-World reported last month, the City of Lawrence, Douglas County and the Lawrence Community Shelter are moving to a shared governance model, and the shelter will be receiving more funding from the city as part of the deal.

The shift to a new model came about two months after LCS Interim Executive Director Melanie Valdez sent an “urgent appeal” to supporters via email asking for support to sustain the shelter’s services. A week later, Valdez told the Journal-World that the shelter’s funds were well short of the roughly $1.6 million per year it needs to keep running and the shelter was “just barely getting by.”