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A Progressive Approach to Labor Relations

PLG represents public sector and non-profit employers in all facets of labor relations.

A Stellar Team

Our approach melds the decades of experience of public sector labor lawyers and non-attorney professionals, all of whom have had leadership positions in labor relations and personnel for public agencies. We are not just advocates; we are also colleagues with and advisors to labor relations and personnel professionals and their in-house attorneys in connection with labor relations, PERB processes, discipline, and grievance/arbitrations. Our negotiators have wide-ranging experience in impasse resolution procedures, such as mediation, fact-finding and interest arbitration in public agencies in California and Nevada. Throughout negotiations and impasse resolution process, we maintain a proactive multi-disciplinary approach, utilizing financial experts, operational experts, and, if necessary, effective public relations strategies to achieve workable settlements.

Breadth of Expertise

PLG's experience spans the entire spectrum of public and non-profit employees, including police and fire personnel, teachers, nurses, lawyers, other professional employees, white-collar employees, blue-collar employees and unionized management employees.

Our role in public sector labor relations varies widely from one client to another, depending on client needs, including:

• union organizing and campaigns; "card check;" bargaining unit disputes
  
• unfair (labor) practice charges
  
• negotiations
  
• closed session strategy sessions and team-building
  
• financial issues pertinent to negotiations issues
  
• structural changes in retirement and health plans
  
• strategies for closures of operations and contracting out
  
• labor market "comparability" issues
  
• interest arbitrations and complex fact-findings
  
• grievances and arbitrations

Trend-Setting Successes

Our breadth of experience - for educational employers, local agencies, state and federal agencies, and non-profit organizations - benefits clients in all sectors, We not only track the trends in all of these sectors: our successes are often ground-breaking and trend-making. Examples of our recent work include:

• developing strategies for effecting employer-wide changes in health benefits, pay policy and retirement benefits with multiple bargaining units
  
• simultaneous negotiations with multiple bargaining units to maintain employer-wide strategic goals while complying with good faith bargaining requirements
• addressing public safety emergencies by negotiating agreements with police unions regarding staffing patterns and scheduling
  
• handling the legal and practical impacts of strikes by "safety sensitive" employees, "partial" strikes, and strikes against non-profit organizations
  
• NLRB and PERB proceedings relating to union organizing efforts in California charter schools
• Handling PERB charging alleging discrimination, bad faith bargaining by unions and management, and unilateral change
• advising public agencies on means for breaking impasses in bargaining, including unilateral implementation
• working with city councils and boards of supervisors on strategies for containing labor costs

Positive Energy and Outstanding Teamwork

In both "interest-based" and "traditional" negotiations environments, we work closely with labor organizations with a focus on collegiality and productive problem solving. We strive to: build direct and honest relationships, establish trust, work with unions to agree on "the facts," and jointly develop options. This process helps labor and management reach the best solutions to complex problems.

We are not "hired guns;" we are team-builders. Our practice relies on strong teamwork and communication between firm personnel, client representatives, and elected officials, mindful of the political challenges of public sector labor relations. The unique synergy between our clients and firm personnel, coupled with respect toward unions and effective communication, help assure practical, economical and successful results.

Meeting the Special Challenges of Our Sector

Special challenges exist in the union-friendly environment in which we work. The union bug on our business cards reflects the respect we have for the role and work of unions.

However, a vexing problem exists for the representatives of public and non-profit agencies. In addition to paying labor costs, public and non-profit agencies must also fund the non-labor costs of many essential programs, such as public safety, public health, education, safe streets and neighborhoods, libraries, public works, supporting business development, clients in need, parks, recreation and other ongoing programmatic activities. To succeed in their missions, public and non-profit employers must strike a careful balance between labor costs - including ever-increasing costs of health and retiree benefits - and the costs needed to ensure the availability of essential services.

The severe financial limitations public and non-profit employers face day by day - not a motive to reap a profit - is what often underpins labor management conflict and misunderstandings. Our philosophy is that a truly "progressive" approach to public service and labor relations requires an appropriate balancing between labor and non-labor costs, rather than placing undue weight on one side of the scale or the other; it contemplates careful attention to the agency's overall financial condition, the agency's ongoing revenue stream, and the unmet needs of the agency's constituents.