Eight ABA units have voted to organize since May 2025. The newest was certified October 19; the oldest is on strike, and another is in a bargaining dispute.
Key Takeaways
- Behavior technicians in Peru, Indiana, won a UAW election 15 to 10. The NLRB certified the unit at Autism Brain Alternatives on October 19, the second ABA workplace in Indiana to organize with the UAW.
- The ABA Workers Union now counts eight organized ABA units since May 2025. They span Maryland, Virginia, California, Indiana, and Massachusetts, and most are small, single-site units built around Registered Behavior Technicians.
- The first-contract stage has produced a strike and a federal charge. Verbal Beginnings technicians walked out July 20, and a Teamsters local has an open bad-faith bargaining charge against Compass Behavioral Group in Virginia.
- No ABA unit has publicly announced a ratified contract. Bargaining is unfolding as payers cut rates, including Indiana Medicaid’s 6 percent reduction this year and a further 4 percent scheduled for April 2027.
On October 19, the National Labor Relations Board certified the United Auto Workers as the bargaining representative for behavior technicians at Autism Brain Alternatives, Inc., in Peru, Indiana. The docket for Case 25-RC-394298 shows the election, held October 8, went 15 to 10, with 25 of 31 eligible employees casting ballots. The unit covers full-time and regular part-time Behavior Technicians, Registered Behavior Technicians, and Resident Registered Behavior Technicians at the Peru facility. Board-certified clinicians, staff trainers, managers, and supervisors are excluded.
The petition, filed September 8 by UAW Region 2B, moved from filing to certification in six weeks. Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath represented the employer. The ABA Workers Union, a volunteer network that tracks organizing campaigns in the field, lists the provider as Engaging Minds and says the technicians confronted management as a group on September 4, about a month before the vote.
Peru is the second ABA workplace in Indiana to organize with the UAW. In January, Registered Behavior Technicians at Circle City ABA’s Kokomo center voted 22 to 0 to join UAW Local 685, according to the tally in Case 25-RC-376823. Both campaigns ran through the UAW’s Region 2B.
Where ABA Unionization Stands in October 2026
The Peru certification brings the ABA Workers Union’s count to eight organized units since May 2025. The list begins with Verbal Beginnings in Rockville, Maryland, where technicians voted 33 to 1 on May 1, 2025, to join Teamsters Local 639, according to Case 05-RC-363261. Compass Behavioral Group’s Richmond-area offices followed in June 2025; the group counts that campaign as two units. FirstSteps for Kids in Alhambra, California, organized in December, Circle City in January, and two more units in March 2026: Aspire Learning Center in Beverly, Massachusetts, where the group reports a 31 to 6 vote, and Golden Steps ABA in Towson, Maryland, where technicians joined UFCW Local 27. The only earlier precedent widely cited in the field is a 2019 vote by behavior technicians at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders’ Portland-East center in Oregon.
The units share a profile. Most are single-site, and most are small: Verbal Beginnings had 38 eligible voters, Circle City 24, and Peru 31. Most are also built around the direct-care technician role and exclude the Board Certified Behavior Analysts who supervise it. Compass is the exception. Its certified unit, in Case 05-RC-365100, includes Behavior Support Clinicians and Field Licensed Behavioral Analysts across offices in Chester, Midlothian, and Richmond, who voted in separate professional and non-professional groups before the Board issued its certification on June 24, 2025.
The unions vary as much as the units. The Teamsters represent technicians in Rockville and, according to a pending NLRB charge, at Compass. The UAW holds the two Indiana units, and the UFCW holds Towson. Several campaigns, including Compass, Aspire, and Golden Steps, were supported early by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, according to the ABA Workers Union.
The ABA First-Contract Stage: A Strike and a Bargaining Charge
Winning an election has proved easier than turning one into a contract. Acuity found no publicly announced first contract at any of the eight units, and the two oldest show why the stage after certification has become the harder one.
Technicians at Verbal Beginnings began a strike on July 20 over wages and the company’s position on a guaranteed 40-hour week, 440 days after their union was certified. When Acuity reported on the dispute in July, neither side had made its proposals public, and the union’s complaints about the company’s conduct at the table had not been filed as a legal claim.
At Compass, the dispute has moved to the Board. On June 29, Warehouse Employees Local Union No. 322, a Teamsters local based in Richmond, filed an unfair labor practice charge alleging that the company refused to recognize the union, refused to bargain or bargained in bad faith, and made unilateral changes, all under Section 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act. An amended charge was docketed September 21, and the case remains open. National Labor Relations Advocates, a Cincinnati firm, represents the company. The allegations are the union’s, and no finding has been made.
The Compass record shows how contested the process has been from the start. Before the union’s election petition, the company filed its own representation petition in April 2025 and withdrew it a week later, according to Case 05-RM-364412. A separate unit-clarification case, filed in August 2025 and still open, concerns whether Clinic Coordinators belong in the unit; the Board issued a notice of hearing in that case in February.
Not every filing in the sector involves a certified union. On September 17, an individual filed a charge against Helping Hands Family, the Zenyth Partners-backed provider, alleging retaliatory discharge under Sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3). That case, docketed in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, is under investigation, and Acuity found no publicly reported election petition involving the company.
Why ABA First Contracts Are Hard to Reach
The obstacle operators cite most often is that ABA revenue is set by payers, not providers. A technician’s hours are billed under codes whose rates come from Medicaid agencies and commercial plans, and those rates can fall or stand still for years. In Indiana, home to both UAW units, the state’s Medicaid program cut rates for individual ABA services 6 percent on April 1, 2026, and scheduled a further 4 percent reduction across ABA codes for April 1, 2027. In Wisconsin, the Medicaid technician rate has held at $11.91 since February 2023. A contract that commits an employer to wage floors or guaranteed hours is a multiyear promise made against revenue that can shrink partway through it.
Organizers describe the barrier differently, pointing to employer resistance during campaigns and at the table. UFCW Local 27 said Golden Steps management sent discouraging emails, circulated anti-union material, pulled technicians aside, and hired an outside consultant before the March vote; Acuity found no public response from the company. Both accounts can hold at once, and in most of these cases the public record contains no published proposals from either side against which to test them.
Turnover adds another layer. Technician attrition is high across the field, so a unit’s membership can change substantially between the vote and the first bargaining session. Providers experimenting with other workforce models, from capped caseloads and heavier supervision to employee ownership, are doing so largely outside the union framework. Pressure has also come from the other direction, with a run of layoffs across behavioral health this year that Acuity has tied to Medicaid cuts and payer exits.
What to Watch in ABA Labor Organizing
Three dockets will shape the next phase. In Peru, certification starts the bargaining clock; under long-standing Board doctrine, a newly certified union’s majority status generally cannot be challenged for a year. At Compass, an amended charge that goes to the core of the duty to bargain remains open before the Board’s Region 5 office in Baltimore. And at Verbal Beginnings, the oldest unit in the current wave, the question is whether a strike over wages and hours can produce the field’s first contract.
The count of units matters less than the outcome in any one of those cases. Until one produces a signed agreement, the sector’s organizing record will consist of election wins and the disputes that follow them.
This is a developing story and will be updated. Readers with information about ABA organizing can reach Acuity at ethan@acuity.news.
