Murphy Anderson's Mark Hanna Speaks at National Lawyers Guild Webinar on Bridging Labor and Employment Law
Murphy Anderson partner Mark Hanna presented "Advancing Workers' Rights: Labor and Employment Law as an Integrated Practice" for a National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Labor and Employment Committee webinar.
Mark draws on a cross-disciplinary practice: representing unions, fighting restrictive covenants, litigating wage theft and misclassification claims, and pursuing whistleblower recoveries under the False Claims Act. He walked practitioners through the strengths and limits of labor law and employment law side by side.
Mark noted that employment law has grown into a vibrant and expanding body of law, federally and in the states, while labor law has remained largely frozen since 1947. Critically, workers have no private right of action under the NLRA. Topics included NLRA, civil rights and whistleblower statutes, wage-and-hour and ERISA claims and the damage caps and forced-arbitration rules that limit the statutes. He also gave guidance on representing immigrant workers.
Mark's final message: organizing, striking, and speech are the biggest drivers of change in a workplace, and labor and employment law are important, but imperfect, tools for both collective and individual action.