The Bargaining Table blog is written by attorneys of BakerHostetler’s Labor Relations team, with an eye toward helping employers manage their unionized workforces.
BakerHostetler has a long and proud history of representing U.S. businesses in their dealings with organized labor. Our relationships with many clients and the unions that represent their workers span several decades in industries including manufacturing, transportation, media, healthcare, hospitality and sports.
We believe that the best labor relations policies are those that prevent the need to battle with the government, unions or employees. Our focus is always on helping our clients maintain positive relationships with their workforce, and our reputation for credibility, integrity and results is well established in the labor-management community. Protecting our client’s credibility as an employer is our number one concern.
Our deep experience enables us to develop creative and effective strategies in negotiation, arbitrations and proceedings before the NLRB and in the courts. In an era in which technology and global competition are driving rapid changes in the workplace across multiple industries and while federal agencies have ramped up enforcement, our clients look to us to guide them through the full range of complex labor challenges.
We have negotiated labor contracts on behalf of clients in every state in the continental United States and with every major union. In organizational drives, our clients have maintained a 95 percent win record involving some of the largest election campaigns in the private sector, including dozens of drives involving 2,000 or more employees and one drive involving 20,000 employees. And, in the past ten years alone, we have handled hundreds of arbitrations. We have deep experience helping our clients devise contingency plans for strike preparedness, including all aspects of operating the business under strike conditions.
While our practice group is comparable in size and depth to that of top employment law boutiques, we also work closely with colleagues in our more than 1000 lawyer firm who concentrate their practice in other areas of law that affect relations with workers, including healthcare, taxation, mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy. We are well equipped to counsel management on labor issues arising from mergers and acquisitions, shutdowns, relocations and other business reorganizations. In the public sector, we have extensive experience navigating the intricacies of municipal finance as they impact contract negotiations.
