Union Labor Lawyers

The Law Offices of Brian J. Smith, ltd. represents unions and their members throughout Ohio, and only unions. Never management. Collective bargaining, grievance and interest arbitration, unfair labor practice charges, fact-finding, union elections, and the daily counsel that keeps a local running, for public and private-sector locals of every size.

Where This Practice Comes From

From Brian J. Smith, Founder and Managing Attorney

My family came from Mingo Junction, a steel town on the Ohio River. They worked the mill, the blast furnace, the rail yards, and the shops, and the ones who did not took care of the ones who did. I learned what a mill was as a child, by the quiet: the whole house hushed through the day when my grandfather worked nights. My great-grandfather was killed between two trains in the mill yard on the night before Easter. My grandfather worked his whole life, bought the truck to pull the camper he had waited for, and died six months into his retirement.

Without the union, the company had every reason to treat the people in that town as parts. The union is what made them people, and what made them strong: one brakeman can be replaced, but thousands standing together are the reason the mill runs. I have never forgotten which side of that line my family stood on, and I have lived paycheck to paycheck myself. When a member tells me what a suspension costs at home, I do not need it explained.

How We Learned This Work

Brian J. Smith was hired as a law student by one of Ohio's foremost union-side labor firms and trained under a lawyer who had come up with the truckers, the printers, and the building trades, and who represented bakers, nursing home workers, turnpike workers, bus drivers, and sanitation workers with the same fight. In those years Brian also met union leaders who had started when organizing was dangerous, and who shared what they knew with anyone willing to listen. Four things they said have shaped every case since.

You don't have to win every fight, but you have to fight every fight. You work for the members. An agreement you reach is better than one somebody else defines for you. Nobody wins a strike; a strike is a failure of the negotiation, and the strength of a union is being so prepared and so united that walking out is never necessary.

Those leaders fought hard and won far more than they lost, and they did it without shouting: with planning, with preparation, and with every member standing behind them. That is what solidarity is. It is the reason the other side of the table listens.

How We Prepare

The employer usually has more money. The union has the people who actually run the operation, and that is the greater asset if the lawyer uses it. Before an arbitration, a fact-finding, or a bargaining session, we learn the facts from the members who live them: the people who have been there longer than the manager across the table and know how the work really gets done. By the time we sit down, we understand the employer's operation better than the employer does, let alone its labor counsel, because we learned it from the people the employer depends on. That is not a boast. It is what happens when you work for the people who do the work.

At the table, the committee has the floor. When management interrupts or talks over a committee member, we stop it. Members speak for themselves in a room where they are safe to do so, and when they need someone to speak for them, that is what we are there for. We adapt to the committee we represent and the negotiation we are in; the preparation is always thorough, but the approach fits the room.

Brian J. Smith has practiced labor law since 2005 and has handled hundreds of arbitrations and contract negotiations, with the full run of Labor Arbitration Reports and Bloomberg Law's labor library behind every brief. Some of those were across a small table in a union hall. Some were on the twenty-sixth floor, in a conference room bigger than a house, across from a team of management lawyers. The preparation was the same for both.

If Your Union Is Represented by This Firm

If your local is represented by The Law Offices of Brian J. Smith, ltd., here is what you can expect of us.

We know your contract, and we know your workplace, because we learned it from your officers and stewards, not from the employer's version. When your grievance goes to arbitration, it is prepared as if it will be decided on the record, because it will be. When your contract is up, the bargaining committee has counsel at the table who has read every proposal, run every number, and knows what the employer's positions actually cost.

None of us grew up working nine to five, and neither do the people we represent. Shifts run nights and weekends, a grievance happens on a Saturday, a bargaining session runs past dinner. So we make ourselves available when the members are working, not when an office is open. The officers and stewards who need our cell numbers have them, and a question that comes in at nine at night gets answered at nine at night, not the next business day.

We do not promise outcomes. No honest lawyer does. We promise preparation, access, and the truth about where a case stands, including when the news is bad. That is what trust is built on, and trust is the whole of this work. A union that trusts its lawyer bargains from strength. A membership that trusts its union stands together. That is what we are here to protect, and what we have protected for more than twenty years.

If Your Union Is Considering New Counsel

Most unions come to us the way unions have always found lawyers: an officer at another local, a business agent, a member who was represented well in a case that mattered, says a name. Either way, the first conversation is the same. You call, and you reach a lawyer, not an intake form. We want to hear about the local: how many members, which employer or employers, what the contract looks like, what is pending, and what has not been working. You will get a straight read on what we see and how we would handle it, and if we are not the right fit, we will say so.

A union does not have to wait for a clean break to change counsel. We take over grievances mid-stream, arbitrations already scheduled, and contract negotiations already under way, and the first thing we do in each is read everything. The file, the contract, the prior awards, the correspondence. Nothing about the transition falls on the officers, and the employer does not get to treat the change as an opening.

Fees are set to fit the local, not the other way around: a per-matter fee, a flat monthly retainer, or hourly billing with time reported to the union, whichever the executive board is most comfortable with. The details are below. The conversation costs nothing. Call 800-641-1970 and ask for Brian, Maria, or Shula.

Direct Union Services

The firm supports union leaders in the day-to-day work of running a local and in the matters that reach a hearing or a courtroom:

• Ongoing counseling and advising, including participation in board and membership meetings.
• Contract negotiations, fact-finding, mediation, conciliation, and interest arbitration.
• Grievance and labor arbitration, including discipline and contract-interpretation disputes.
• Leadership training for stewards, trustees, executive board members, officers, and business agents.
• Representation before the State Employment Relations Board (SERB), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Department of Labor, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
• Filing and defending unfair labor practice charges, with related litigation in state and federal court.
• Internal union governance, including conducting elections for union officers.

Fee Arrangements

Every union balances its duty to protect members against the need to control costs. To fit that reality, the firm offers several fee structures, and a union can choose the arrangement that matches its budget and the matter at hand.

Sectors We Represent

Over more than twenty years, Brian J. Smith has represented unions and their members across a wide range of fields, including public and private transportation, policing, corrections, dispatching, manufacturing, mining, health care, education, security, ready-mix concrete, construction, baking, and public services. That experience spans hundreds of labor arbitrations and contract negotiations, for locals of every size. Represented employees have worked at organizations such as the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority, the Ohio Turnpike Commission, the Cleveland public schools, the Medina County Engineer's Office, the Lorain County Detention Center, Cargill, Inc., Granger Trucking, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal, Smucker's, Pierre's, and Schwebel's, among others.

Among those, the firm's representation of police unions, their patrol officers, corrections officers, sergeants, lieutenants, dispatchers, and clerks, is work we hold as an honor. Officers do their jobs knowing a single decision will be replayed and judged by people who were not there, and the chief who should be fighting for them is often across the table asking for more and offering less. Until they hire us, they are as much an underdog as anyone we represent. That we also defend people charged by police has never been a conflict; years of taking apart traffic stops is exactly what an officer needs when a chief is second-guessing a decision made in three seconds on a dark road.

Transit

Public Safety

Dispatch

Skilled Trades

Construction

Health Care

Education

Grocery & Retail

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