Kristin E. Michaels

Kristin is a partner in the Labor & Employment practice group. She focuses her practice on all aspects of labor and employment law and has extensive experience in the areas of labor relations, employment litigation, employment advice and counseling, and mergers and acquisitions. Kristin has particularly deep experience in the area of traditional labor law, where she has handled numerous unfair labor practice cases and litigation, strikes and injunctions, collective bargaining negotiations, organizing drives, representation cases and hearings, Section 301 litigation, the labor law aspects of mergers and acquisitions, and arbitrations.

Kristin has been the chief spokesperson in more than fifty collective bargaining negotiations, all of which resulted in successful collective bargaining agreements. She has successfully handled issues in arbitration or before the NLRB as varied as scope of recognition, outsourcing, transfer of work, impasse and implementation upon impasse, reductions in force, accretion, and unilateral changes in terms and conditions of employment, among others. Along with a colleague, Kristin handled one of the largest strikes in U.S. history, successfully overturning the NLRB's finding of an unfair labor practice strike.

Regarding employment litigation, she has handled hundreds of cases involving claims of harassment and discrimination, wage and hour violations, and breaches of restrictive covenants. She has experience litigating cases involving the gamut of labor and employment issues, from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act through the Fair Labor Standards Act, and also encompassing assorted state and federal statutes.

She also routinely provides legal counsel with respect to company investigations of claims of harassment and discrimination.

Clients nationwide have come from a wide range of industries, including media, health care, hospitality, technology, manufacturing, staffing, telecommunications, retail and utilities. Her clients rely on her ability to solve problems and develop strategies to achieve their business objectives.