Employers with unionized work forces need legal counsel that not only meets short-term goals but also puts the client in the best position long-term. Achieving both takes experience and judgment — with the client’s business and operations, people and personalities, and some of the most intricate and demanding areas of labor law. “Employment” lawyers are not necessarily labor lawyers.

We are true labor lawyers with long and diverse “can do” track records across the wide spectrum of private sector and public employers and unions. To help make clients successful in their labor relations, clients deserve labor lawyers who:

• Know and have a track record with the union players, the international union, the local union, the business agents and even politicians
• Know the history of negotiations and the practices of the client in applying the vast variety of contract terms to resolve, defend and win, grievances and arbitrations
• Create opportunities to secure results not only at, but also away from, the bargaining table
• Create management-labor cooperation and dialogue where desired, and help put the union in its place when needed
• Forge conditions to reduce grievance numbers and backlogs
• Understand customer and supplier relations which can be impacted — positively and negatively — by labor relations, understand the industry, and have the wherewithal in media relations
• Maintain ready, working knowledge of arbitrators, what specific arbitrators have done and not done, and the varying lines of arbitral authority in a vast number of subject areas
• Teach clients how to successfully handle problems “on the floor” and grievances day-to-day on their own, to achieve results, build rapport in the workplace, and reduce legal and operational expenses
• See the forest as well as the trees