News & Cases

Front-line workers who have valiantly continued to serve the public through the global pandemic have been hard hit; some have made the supreme sacrifice and given their lives in the service of others. Many of our firm’s Union clients have faced varied challenges in working with employers to protect these heroes and provide needed benefits...Continue reading→

For a number of years, until early June 2017, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ members worked without a new agreement being reached.  That union faced a number of complex legal challenges in this protracted battle.  Perhaps the most serious involved the School Reform Commission’s attempt to “cancel the contract” – to put into effect its...Continue reading→

Spear Wilderman client Sheet Metal Workers Union Local 19 spearheaded an effort to change the law regarding representation of employees supplied by emplyment agencies to construction and industrial employers.  Since 2004, the NLRB had prohibited workers supplied by such agencies to be represented for purposes of collective bargaining alongside permanent employees with whom they work....Continue reading→

The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board agreed with the legal position asserted by SW client AFSCME District Council 33, declaring the City of Philadelphia’s unilateral changing of the City’s DROP program in September 2011 to be unlawful.  DROP is the acronym for Deferred Retirement Option Plan, enacted for all City employees in 1999.  For the rank-and-file...Continue reading→

Our attorneys have been instrumental in the fight by one of our clients, Gas Works Employees Union Local 686, against the City’s campaign to privatize the City-owned Philadelphia Gas Works.  Jim Runckel has been the union’s point person, fighting the Mayor’s aggressive march toward unloading one of the few profitable assets the City has.  Working...Continue reading→

As detailed below in an earlier post, SW client AFSCME District Council 33 had gone five years – since July 1, 2009 – without a contract with the City of Philadelphia. The long, unprecedented fight ended in August 2014, with the City agreeing to a contract granting City workers a $2,800 signing bonus, an immediate...Continue reading→

For decades, the City of Philadelphia, with full knowledge it was doing so, has evaded complying with its Home Rule Charter prohibition against City employees holding other governmental jobs, by hiring full-time School District employees — mostly Phys Ed teachers — to work after school and in the summer as Recreation Leaders at City-owned pools...Continue reading→

One of our newest attorneys, Nick Botta, was recently involved in litigation reaching the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  Nick represented clients before the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in a case involving the construction of a decedent’s will, the beneficiary designation procedures of a multiemployer employer pension plan, and even religious practices arising under Islamic and Sharia law. ...Continue reading→

Spear Wilderman attorneys recently led the successful fight against Mayor Michael Nutter’s attempt to derail the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees throughout Pennsylvania.  Our client, AFSCME District Council 33, has been in contract negotiations with the City of Philadelphia since the last agreement expired on June 30, 2009.  The more than 10,000 workers DC33...Continue reading→

Spear Wilderman recently successfully represented four workers employed by Kaolin Mushroom Farms, Inc, who had been fired for alleged insubordination and threatening what the company termed a wildcat strike.  Five grievants, who worked as mushroom harvesters, had started work one day last April at 7 am, and worked steadily following a brief break taken at...Continue reading→