Peter J. Brown

As a partner at the state's largest public sector labor and employment law firm, Brown is the chief labor negotiator for about 20 Southern California public agencies and has negotiated close to 40 collective bargaining agreements in the past 18 months.

Brown said he was drawn to labor negotiations because they involve the same kind of negotiating skills he uses in everyday life, whether with family, friends, colleagues or others.

"Life is a negotiation," he said. "The skills I use are life skills: treating people with respect, being collaborative and understanding where other people are coming from. My style is not confrontational."

As an example, Brown said that when he arrived early to one recent meeting, he found he was the only person in the room wearing a suit, surrounded by street repair workers in their work clothes. "While we were waiting, we just started talking about our kids, how the Lakers were doing and what they planned to do over the weekend, which helped things run more smoothly later," he said.

Those people skills came in handy last year, when Brown helped the city of Glendale patch up its relationship with a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers. The city had recognized the local in 2011, but the two parties had not been able to hammer out a collective bargaining agreement, prompting the local to formally accuse the city of unfair labor practices. "Their relationship was horrible," Brown said.

Brown established a rapport with the union representatives and soon produced a labor agreement that both the city and the union embraced.

Brown said that in labor negotiations neither the employer nor the workers fully understand labor law, so he often makes a presentation on exactly what the law provides, even if it cuts both ways.

"I have to give a lot of credit to my clients, who recognize the importance of good employee relations and morale," he said.

One of his more challenging tasks was dealing with a group of public employees who understood legal concepts all too well: the Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Association, representing 380 prosecutors, public defenders and county counsel.

"I've negotiated with many different groups before — police officers, firefighters, maintenance workers — but I never negotiated lawyers, at least not as a group of employees," he said. "Even if they weren't experts in the particular field that I work, they knew what questions to ask and how to frame their arguments."

The dispute in Riverside County had more to do with economics than law. Riverside still has not fully recovered from the recent recession, so the county supervisors said it was not time to raise the attorneys' wages and benefits.

To explain the situation, Brown gave a presentation to the lawyers that not only laid out the county's financial situation but also compared the lawyers' current compensation to their peers in other public agencies to show that their pay packages were not out of line.

After a few concessions on each side — such as the county's decision to let the lawyers cash out their unpaid leave time — they signed a two-year contract.

"Both parties often come away with less than what they wanted, but having an agreement is better than a fight," Brown said.

— Dean Calbreath