Understanding Your Business and Achieving results.

Foley Hoag’s Labor and Employment practice group serves clients in the industrial, medical, retail, technological, financial, academic and governmental communities in New England and nationwide. With more than 25 lawyers on our team, our long-standing strength in representing employers in labor relations and employment-litigation defense matters is complemented by our experience in dealing with the emerging issues confronting employers in the 21st century.

The 2007 CHAMBERS USA GUIDE, in ranking our labor and employment group number one in Massachusetts, said: "Foley Hoag's labor and employment practice benefits from a formidable regional reputation, and one which is staunchly supported by its clients, who spoke of its 'cost-effective approach' and 'tremendous resources.' ...The team was described in glowing terms to CHAMBERS as 'good lawyers and pragmatic business people, who understand our business, and achieve the results we need,' with clients keen to stress this 'business acumen, and real-world practical side,' as crucial to their decision-making." 

We handle a wide variety of complex matters facing our clients each day, including attempts to seek class-wide relief in wage-and-hour and other actions; efforts by unions to obtain neutrality and card-check agreements; increased efforts to control employment-litigation costs through alternative dispute resolution, particularly arbitration; enforcement of non-competition agreements; Sarbanes-Oxley investigations; and claims for stock options and other employment benefits under ERISA and state wage laws

In addition, we provide strategic and day-to-day advice to our employer clients on every aspect of personnel management. These matters include hiring and termination; compensation, benefits and leaves of absences, as well as many other matters. Our practice is sufficiently large and sophisticated to handle our clients' most complex employment issues. Yet, we are flexible and practical enough to serve the employment law needs of smaller businesses as well.

Labor Law

Our lawyers have years of experience representing employers, on both a nationwide and regional basis, in all aspects of traditional labor law. For example, we provide nationwide labor counsel to large corporations and diverse industries. This involves: 

  • Providing advice on numerous issues arising from the National Labor Relations Act and various state labor laws 
  • Assisting clients in collective bargaining matters 
  • Representing employers before the National Labor Relations Board 
  • Handling grievance and interest arbitrations arising under collective bargaining agreements 
  • Helping employers preserve their non-union status in the face of organizing campaigns 
  • Assisting employers in obtaining the appropriate bargaining units during a union election

Employment Litigation

Our employment litigators handle our clients’ most complex cases. We have defended lawsuits that run the gamut of modern employment litigation, including: 

  • Individual and class-wide claims of violations of federal and state wage-and-hour law 
  • Claims of employment discrimination and harassment 
  • ERISA and other benefits-related claims 
  • Employment-related claims based on contract, tort and other statutory theories of liability

As employers have become increasingly concerned about protecting their intellectual property and client relationships, we have counseled, pursued and defended claims involving non-competition and related agreements, as well as trade-secret theft and fiduciary-duty claims. Our employment litigation experience includes the following types of cases:

Wage and Hour Litigation

Employment-related claims, particularly in the wage-and-hour area, are increasingly being brought as class actions or collective actions. We have extensive experience in responding to class-wide claims; and we work aggressively to defeat class certification. In addition to our substantial class-action experience, we have been involved in a number of high-profile cases involving wage-and-hour claims.

Employment Discrimination and Harassment Litigation

We have successfully represented hundreds of employer clients in cases involving claims of employment discrimination and/or harassment. We appear in federal and state courts nationwide, at the EEOC, the MCAD and other state equal-employment-opportunity agencies.

Our focus is to obtain dismissal of the plaintiff's claims at the earliest possible stage. When early dismissal was not possible, we have prevailed on behalf of our employer clients at administrative hearings, bench trials and jury trials on all types of discrimination and harassment claims.

Wrongful Discharge and Other Related Disputes

We have defended many lawsuits involving employment-related claims based on contract, tort and other non-statutory theories. In recent years, employers have seen a dramatic increase in cases involving employees alleging unlawful deprivation of stock options, bonuses, commissions, and other forms of compensation. Claims of retaliation for alleged whistleblowing, based on laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, are also increasingly prevalent. Our labor and employment lawyers have defended many such actions in court, before government agencies, and in arbitration.

ERISA and Benefits-Related Litigation

We handle all types of litigation involving pension and welfare plans, including both single- and multi-employer plans. These cases involve claims of breach of fiduciary duty, denial of benefits, alienation of benefits and withdrawal liability.

Non-Competition Agreements and Related Issues

Many businesses have seen an upsurge in cases involving enforcement of employment agreements. We have extensive experience in prosecuting and defending disputes concerning the enforcement of non-competition, non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements between employers and employees. We also help our clients with related claims of unfair competition, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, misappropriation of trade secrets and tortious interference. In many of these cases, our extensive knowledge of computer forensics investigations has enabled us to achieve successful outcomes for our clients.

Our work in this area is not limited to litigation. We create strategic approaches to these issues and put in place appropriate agreements to protect our clients’ business interests. Our lawyers also have extensive experience in advising departing employees and their prospective employers on appropriate approaches to dealing with existing restrictive agreements.

Employment Counseling

In addition to litigation, we help clients with the day-to-day employment issues. We understand that each client’s success depends on maintaining excellence in its workforce. So we strive to ensure that legal standards do not distract from the goal of retaining good employees and improving or terminating poor employees.

We assist clients in creating strategies that help achieve this goal without costly litigation. Increasingly, as our clients’ operations have expanded nationally and internationally, so too has the scope of the employment law advice we provide. Our employment counseling services include: 

  • Preparation of employment agreements, including offer letters, non-disclosure and non-competition agreements and other documents relating to the hiring process. 
  • Preparation of employee handbooks and particular employment policies, such as harassment, leave-of-absence and information technology acceptable-use policies. 
  • Advice on workforce reductions and related issues, including WARN, OWBPA, formulation of ERISA-governed severance plans and separation agreements. 
  • Wage-and-hour compliance under federal and state laws. 
  • Compliance with the 2006 Massachusetts Health Care Reform Law. 
  • Advising on workplace safety and OSHA compliance. 
  • Navigating overlapping state and federal laws relating to family and medical leave, disability accommodation and pregnancy-leave compliance. 
  • Workplace privacy issues, including formulation of Internet and e-mail monitoring policies and drug and alcohol testing issues. 
  • Advising employers on the appropriateness of mandatory arbitration in the workplace. 
  • Investigating and responding to complaints of harassment and other forms of discrimination and averting retaliation claims. 
  • Drafting appropriate executive compensation packages and addressing executive compensation issues as they arise. 
  • Performing employment law compliance surveys. We review our client’s human resources and personnel operations and provide a comprehensive assessment of compliance with federal and state statutory and regulatory requirements. We also recommend any necessary preventative or corrective measures.

Publications

We try to keep our clients informed about changing employment topics through our Employment Bulletin. It provides immediate reporting on important labor and employment law developments, such as new court decisions and legislation.