Christopher Foster 

Christopher Foster leads McDermott’s traditional labor practice subgroup. The group’s 15 lawyers in the U.S. and Europe represent companies regarding union elections, contract negotiations and any NLRB activity. They also consult on corporate transactions involving unionized businesses, and they advise about any union-related legislation.

He says they do all that a bit differently than many others in the field. “We take a next-gen approach to labor advising, where we focus on protecting brands and taking the high road at every single stage of our advising,” Foster said. “Our labor practice is a bit different from others and has different structures.”

For instance, not too long ago, he represented the crime-reporting app company Citizen in negotiating an initial contract with its new union, the Communications Workers of America. “It was one of the first collective bargaining agreements in the tech industry,” Foster said. He and his team developed a cooperative relationship with the union, which allowed them to finalize a contract within a few months.

“That’s an example of a lot of what we do, just being proactive in getting contracts done instead of having them last a long time,” he said.

Another example is his work with a pre-IPO technology company a couple of years ago when it was facing a nationwide union organizing drive and election. Foster’s team helped the company, with the union’s agreement, to conduct the election electronically rather than with the traditional paper ballots, “which is not part of the NLRB’s standard processes,” he said. The result was that many more employees voted than otherwise would have, and they decided not to unionize.

He has secured electronic voting for other companies as well. “We’re engaged a lot by clients that want to protect their brands at every step of the election processes,” he said. The companies’ goal, he said, is to ensure that the election “is fair and free and everybody gets their say.”

Early last year, Foster advised Outside magazine when the Denver NewsGuild moved to organize it. He helped arrange for electronic voting there, too. But before the ballots had gone out, the union withdrew the election petition.

Foster and his labor group represent a number of well-known media, entertainment and technology companies. But he won’t name them.

He would say that he has advised media, entertainment and tech clients in union election processes as they try to determine who’s eligible to vote under the National Labor Relations Act.

He also represented the publisher of several well-known magazines in negotiations with the NewsGuild for collective bargaining agreements.

And in the last year, he has negotiated settlement agreements with charging parties on behalf of about a half-dozen technology companies in order to resolve unfair labor practice investigations without the need for NLRB trials.

“We don’t just march things through to the standard NLRB processes when it doesn’t make sense for the client,” Foster said.

— Don DeBenedictis