Aaron L. Agenbroad  

Aaron L. Agenbroad, the partner-in-charge of Jones Day’s San Francisco office, is one of the relatively few attorneys who handles traditional labor matters as well as employment litigation and advice. Lately, it’s been the labor side of his practice that is keeping him busiest.

He has represented the McClatchy newspaper chain in labor matters for the last decade. A few years ago, that meant dealing with unions at the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Bee papers in Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto. But in 2022, he negotiated the first collective bargaining agreements with unions for the Miami Herald, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and four papers in Washington state. He also advised the Fort Worth paper during a 24-day strike.

In negotiations for another first contract, Agenbroad is currently representing Stanford Hospital Center and its affiliated children’s hospital in bargaining with its newly unionized residents and fellows. Young doctors are not a traditionally unionized group, he said. But Stanford is not alone. “There’s a wave of organizing across residency programs across the country as well,” he said.

Last year, he also negotiated renewed collective bargaining agreements with 2,500 service employees at the hospitals. Before that, he helped Stanford’s hospitals reach a successor agreement with 5,000 nurses. That agreement reached last May took 30 bargaining sessions across four months and followed a one-week strike.

“There is continued momentum on unionization efforts across the country right now,” Agenbroad said. “You’re seeing it in a variety of settings,” notably Starbucks and Amazon, as well as newspapers and doctors.

There are also union-organizing efforts at a number of technology companies. In one important such matter, Agenbroad is representing a very large technology company in a dispute with a union over whether his client is the “joint employer” of a few dozen quality control workers who are employed by another large company with which the tech company has contracted.

His client “didn’t play any role in interviewing them, paying them, reviewing them or supervising them,” he said. He represented the tech company in a four-day hearing before an NLRB regional director, who ruled for the union. Agenbroad’s client has appealed.

“We’re litigating the joint employer issue on behalf of [the client] and that litigation remains ongoing,” he said.

Agenbroad said he expects the issue “will continue to be a source of contention for the next couple of years” for many companies. “We’re continuing to see a more aggressive or expansive interpretation by the NLRB on who is an employer in a variety of contexts.”

— Don DeBenedictis