“We are all protected by the civil service rules, but if unionizing provides a greater benefit to workers’ rights, we support it,” says Sam Alton, chief of staff to Bell, the prosecuting attorney-elect.

But, Alton notes, “The timing is curious. For 28 years the employees have not unionized, and I noticed this happened just after the voters demanded sweeping change.”

It is unusual but not unheard of for attorneys to unionize.

Earlier this year there was a short-lived effort to form a union among attorneys at the nonprofit Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. A similar legal aid organization in Brooklyn, N.Y., has a union.

So do the assistant prosecutors who work in Jackson County, Mo., and assistant prosecutors in Los Angeles.

But the arrangement can be fraught with potential conflicts, writes criminal justice journalist and author Radley Balko. In a 2015 op-ed in the Washington Post, for instance, Balko pointed out a conflict between the L.A. prosecutors union opposing legislation requiring special prosecutors for police shootings. That advocacy put prosecutors on the same political team as the union representing the police officers they would be investigating.