Our attorneys regularly advise clients in connection with collective bargaining issues, representing them in contractual fact-finding and arbitration proceedings, acting on their behalf in improper practice proceedings before the New York State Public Employment Relations Board and the New York City Board of Collective Bargaining and counselling them on internal governance matters. Our Public Sector Labor team also guides clients in the pursuit of labor law reform and the impact of federal, state and city anti-discrimination provisions. In addition, we regularly represent some of New York's largest public sector unions in disputes before courts, administrative tribunals, and arbitration panels, as well as at the bargaining table with a focus on integrated, yet tailored, solutions for complex matters that draw upon our broad spectrum of knowledge. Our team also serves as lead counsel to many union welfare benefit funds and retirement plans, which administer hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits, in connection with collective bargaining, operational and regulatory compliance and fiduciary duty matters.
Representative Matters
- Represent a new union of legislative employees in its historic effort to organize employees of the New York City Council, successfully forming the largest union of legislative employees in the country.
- Represent the statutorily-mandated coalition of municipal unions covering almost 400,000 New York City employees in the negotiation of citywide health benefits.
- Guided the public sector New York City unions through every stage of the COVID pandemic.
- Represented administrators in community based-publicly funded early education programs, who are predominantly women of color, in seeking pay parity with their less diverse district counterparts.
- Defended unions from a coordinated effort to defund them by seeking retroactive recovery of agency fees in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Janus
- Represent one of the City's largest municipal unions in contract arbitrations and related mediation and administrative proceedings.
- Successfully represented one of New York City’s largest unions in challenging significant budgetary cuts to the New York City Department of Education and seeking to compel the restoration of funds for education under two separate provisions of New York State law.
- Successfully represent a coalition of unions, community groups, parents and elected officials in challenging the improper closure of schools in violation of provisions of the State Education law.
- Successfully represented a class of some 48,000 current and former public employees and their unions challenging systemic inaccuracies in the calculation of pension benefits amounting to more than $160 million over the course of decades.
- Successfully represented a municipal union in its contract arbitration seeking to enforce contractual workplace assignment seniority rules in the context of the unprecedented influx of demoted long-time managerial staff.