Education

B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, Cum laude

J.D., UCLA School of Law, Order of the Coif

Experience

Michael Weiner joined the firm in 2005 and became a shareholder in 2010. He provides representation to labor unions, union-affiliated non-profit organizations, and multiemployer pension, health and welfare, and other employee benefit plans. He regularly appears in federal and state court, before the National Labor Relations Board, and in arbitration, and advises clients on all aspects of labor, employment, and employee benefits law.

Mr. Weiner frequently represents unions in collective bargaining, serving as both an adviser and as lead negotiator for unions in a wide array of industries, including entertainment, health care, construction, and manufacturing. His focuses also include arbitrating contract interpretation and discipline cases and representing the institutional interests of unions, both counseling clients on legal compliance and defending them in litigation.

In addition, Mr. Weiner has extensive employee benefits experience. He often handles plan design matters for multiemployer plans – drafting trust agreements, collective bargaining agreement language, plan documents, and summary plan descriptions – as well as submitting plans to the IRS for approval. He has litigated various employee benefit issues, including fiduciary matters, withdrawal liability, and collections. He also regularly assists plan trustees in navigating their investment responsibilities, ensuring legal compliance and negotiating terms with investment managers.

Mr. Weiner has unique expertise representing training and apprenticeship trust funds, helping clients obtain millions of dollars in government grant funding and counseling them on the complex intersection of ERISA, apprenticeship law, and federal and state grant requirements (including the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act).

Matters handled by Mr. Weiner in recent years include successfully concluding several complex labor negotiations, including several first contracts resulting in double-digit percentage wage increases, winning an NLRB proceeding and related arbitration leading to the recovery of nearly $47 million by hundreds of union members, defeating a major retail employer’s suit to vacate an arbitration award, resulting in a wage increase for thousands of employees, and winning an arbitration resulting in more than $11 million in backpay for hundreds of employees and successfully defending that decision in both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Weiner is a member of the Employee Benefits Committee of the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law and a contributing author of Employee Benefits Law, the leading treatise on the subject. He is also a member of the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance and the Labor and Employment Law Sections of the California Lawyers Association and the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

He graduated from UCLA (Cum Laude) and UCLA School of Law (Order of the Coif), where he was Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review. His article on the NLRB’s remedial authority is frequently cited by academics and practitioners.

Memberships

• State Bar of California

• California Lawyers Association and its Labor and Employment Law Section

• American Bar Association and its Labor and Employment Law Section

• Los Angeles County Bar Association and its Labor and Employment Law Section

• AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance

• International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans

Publications

• “Can the NLRB Deter Unfair Labor Practices? Reassessing the Punitive-Remedial Distinction in Labor Law Enforcement”, 52 UCLA L. Rev. 1579 (2005)