David J. Reis

David J. Reis

SAN FRANCISCO - David J. Reis chairs Arnold & Porter’s labor and employment practice group, and he has been busy in both fields during the past year.

On the labor side, he had several successes for his longtime client, El Camino Hospital. In the fall, he negotiated a three-year collective bargaining agreement between the hospital and its main union that set raises for a flat 3% per year. “Having a three-year contract is good for the hospital,” he said.

He also led the successful negotiations with the hospital’s other major union for building engineers. The talks were complicated by the fact that the same union was on strike against Kaiser Permanente in the area.

And he represented the hospital in two arbitrations with SEIU. One dealing with seniority-related questions was decided in April. The other, before the California Public Employment Relations Board, was submitted for decision in March.

On the employment side of his practice, he has been busy helping clients concerned about classifying workers as independent contractors. “It’s been a really active area, probably more so in the last years than in my prior 27 years of practice,” he said.

The principal reason was AB 5, which limited who could be classified as independent contractors. But the statute exempts some workers, and later bills exempted even more — a fact Reis used this year to settle a class action and PAGA case very favorably for a client. Gimenez v. Alacrity Solutions Group LLC, 30-2020-01175645 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 22, 2020).

The plaintiffs were insurance adjusters who claimed that under the new law, they should be treated as employees. Reis took over the matter from another firm and asked for mediation. He knew the Legislature was advancing a bill to exempt adjusters, and many others, from AB 5. That bill passed and took effect in January. “It really gutted a lot of the [plaintiffs’] claims on favorable terms,” he said.

But Reis said AB 5 has caused some of his national clients to reconsider hiring workers in California and other states with similar laws.

Like many people, Reis has done much of his work over the last several years on Zoom. He sees some irony in comparing how he worked with what he worked on. “There’s a little bit of a tension, I think, with [AB 5]… and the freedom that remote work provides,” he said.

-Don DeBenedictis