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About this industry

Description

Employers in this sector face unique challenges, including managing a dispersed workforce and meeting myriad safety, wage and hour, and other compliance mandates.

Our multidisciplinary team of seasoned labor and employment attorneys has significant industry-specific experience to meet all the workplace law needs of domestic and multinational shipping, trucking, and warehousing companies. With offices across the U.S., we are familiar with all applicable federal, state, and local laws relevant to employers in these industries and represent them on a daily basis before regional and local courts and government agencies.

Services we offer

Some of the specific services we provide include:

  • Advising clients on all aspects of a legally-compliant drug testing policy, including compliance with U.S. Department of Transportation drug testing regulations;
  • Representing clients during occupational safety and health enforcement actions and advising on OSHA and local safety and health requirements, including operator safety requirements at both the federal and state level;
  • Advising on all aspects of wage and hour compliance, including misclassification, pay practices and owner-operator issues, and defending class and collective actions involving misclassification issues, minimum wage and overtime claims, meal and rest break claims and off-the-clock work allegations;
  • Providing practical advice and solutions on all aspects of disability and leave management as well as workplace privacy issues including those particularly relevant to employers in the transportation industry; 
  • Assisting clients in working with federal government agencies and achieving their regulatory compliance goals; 
  • Drafting employment-related documents, including employment and severance agreements, handbooks and policy manuals, non-compete and non-disclosure agreements; 
  • Drafting independent contractor agreements and assisting clients in preserving the independent contractor status of their owner-operators;
  • Representing and advising employers on the entire range of labor relations issues in non-unionized, partially and fully unionized workforces; 
  • Defending against discrimination, harassment, retaliation, whistleblower and other employment-related claims; and
  • Formulating employee benefit programs and providing full-service counseling on employee benefits issues including but not limited to issues arising out of multi-employer pension plans.

Airline and airline service providers

We have significant experience representing both airlines (domestic and foreign) as well as airline service providers which employ an ever-growing number of employees. Some of the specific services we provide include:

  • Advising on union organizing and National Mediation Board (NMB) elections, including providing representation before the NMB in connection with election petitions;
  • Providing representation in collective bargaining negotiations and mediation;
  • Counseling with regard to contingency planning in the event of potential self-help and providing representation with regard to self-help activity;
  • Providing representation in grievance arbitration before system boards;
  • Establishing and defending the status of airline service providers as “derivative carriers” in proceedings before the NLRB and the NMB;
  • Counseling clients on legality and compliance with local minimum wage and labor harmony requirements often uniquely imposed by airport authorities;
  • Counseling clients subject to the RLA on their obligations under federal and state wage and hour laws;
  • Advising clients in all aspects of preventive counseling, including human resource decisions, application of leave of absence provisions, reasonable accommodations, employee policies, benefits advice and related issues;
  • Representing clients in all aspects of litigation, whether employment discrimination, retaliation, whistleblower or claims related to the RLA; and
  • Providing a full array of immigration services to clients with employees transferring from overseas to work in the United States.

Our airline and airline service provider practice is comprised of experienced attorneys with a wide range of backgrounds representing employers in all facets of these industries. We bring to each representation a clear understanding of the business complexities and the often unique legal requirements faced by employers in this sector.

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