Kenneth Dolin

Mr. Kenneth R. Dolin is a partner in the Labor & Employment Department of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. He represents management in the area of labor and employment law. He has extensive experience in the area of traditional labor relations law including significant NLRB case handling experience, collective bargaining, arbitrations, strikes and lockouts, and strategizing and advising management on complex labor relations issues.

He also has an extensive employment litigation practice, including discrimination and restrictive covenant litigation. Finally, Mr. Dolin also has extensive experience in business restructuring issues such as reductions in force, plant closings, work relocations and outsourcings.

He counseled Brach’s Confections in the phased shutdown of its flagship Chicago manufacturing complex and outsourcing of that manufacturing work overseas affecting 1,500 employees. He was responsible for the media control, negotiations with the City of Chicago and negotiations with the labor union representing about 1,100 hourly employees.

Mr. Dolin successfully planned the strategy and negotiated a complex labor agreement for another client. He successfully defended more than a dozen union unfair labor practice charges filed against that client during these negotiations and managed the legalities of that client operating during a strike, including security issues and the client’s use of replacement workers.

He also managed the media communications throughout the dispute and was responsible for the strategy of locking out the employees after the union decided to end its strike. The labor dispute had received constant media attention in the state and the client had received overwhelmingly positive publicity. The terms of the settlement, which included more than two dozen language changes that enhanced management’s operational flexibility, were far more favorable for the client than what the client even proposed to the union when the strike began.

He planned the strategy and negotiated a very complex labor agreement on behalf of a client and resolved serious unfair labor practices on terms the client viewed as very favorable, including the vacation of a court-enforced Board order. All of these problems had lingered for several years before Mr. Dolin was retained.

Mr. Dolin counseled a client in permanently replacing economic strikers, firing 24 striking boat captains without an NLRB complaint issuing and winning the subsequent union organizing campaign involving the Longshoremen. He also has counseled clients on successfully building non-union plants right next to union plants on about a half-dozen occasions.

Mr. Dolin has investigated sexual harassment complaints involving senior executives, including the presidents of major companies. He has also counseled on dozens of major reductions-in-force, each involving anywhere from 100 to several hundred layoffs without a single meritorious lawsuit resulting. From 1982 to 1984, Mr. Dolin was an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, Region 29, Brooklyn, New York.

Education:

• J.D., University of Illinois College of Law (1980)
• LL.M. in Labor Law, New York University School of Law (1987)
• M.I.L.R., Cornell University (1981)
  • New York State School of Industrial & Labor Relations
• B.A., University of Wisconsin (1978)