Cameron W. Fox 

Cameron W. Fox is very interested right now in the widening intersection of traditional labor law and the technology industry.

“We are seeing a tremendous effort to organize workers in the tech industry,” she said, and the current NLRB wants to make unionization easier. High-paying tech companies historically have not had unions, and now they are suffering layoffs and workers who don’t want to return to the office, even when it’s on a spacious campus.

The tension is “creating a moment in time right now that I think … we will be seeing play out in the next several years.”

As the chair of her firm’s traditional labor practice group, she is seeing some of that firsthand.

She represented Google in a high-profile NLRB trial in early 2021 after several employees it terminated in 2019 for leaking sensitive, confidential documents alleged they were fired over organizing activity. The employees believed — wrongly, Fox said — that the documents they distributed showed Google had gone back on a promise not to cooperate excessively with immigration agencies. Another two employees were disciplined for improperly accessing internal security systems partly as a protest of the first firings. The case was resolved before the trial ended, Fox said.

More recently, she has represented Cognizant before the NLRB after some contract workers who the international staffing agency placed at a Google facility in Texas voted to unionize and claimed Google is their joint employer. Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation and Google LLC, Joint Employers, 16-RC-305751 (NLRB, filed Oct. 21, 2022).

“The law is changing” on that issue, Fox said. She noted that the NLRB is expected to issue a newer, relaxed rule on joint employers soon.

In addition to union and NLRB matters, Fox also handles employment case litigation. She has been representing Google in a convoluted PAGA matter for nearly seven years. Doe v. Google, CGC-16-556034 (S.F. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 20, 2016).

The plaintiff’s lawsuit alleges Google’s confidentiality agreements unlawfully restrict employees’ speech. A judge agreed with Fox’s argument that the issue was pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act, but the Court of Appeal reversed. “So that’s how we find ourselves in 2023, still litigating a case filed in late 2016,” she said.

A large part of her practice is defending employers in cases involving serious allegations of harassment, sexual misconduct and discrimination. One of those cases raised an unusual issue.

She represented the Marsh McLennan insurance company after a junior employee accused a senior employee of raping her. Fox got the company dismissed from the case. But then the senior employee claimed the Labor Code required the company to reimburse his legal fees. “That wound up being a major … part of the litigation,” she said.

Only after the man pleaded guilty to a lesser charge did the court grant Fox’s summary judgment motion and reject the man’s claim. Doe v. Marsh McLennan Companies, Inc., CGC-19-578222 (S.F. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 7, 2019).

— Don DeBenedictis