Aaron L. Agenbroad

Aaron Agenbroad's career spans 27 years, all dedicated to the practice of labor and employment law at Jones Day. His passion for the field was ignited by the diversity within the area, allowing him to engage in various facets such as union negotiations, unfair labor practice work, arbitrations, as well as handling single plaintiff cases, class cases and providing advice and counseling.


"Additionally, I also appreciated the variation in the size of matters, including smaller ones that allowed me to get more substantive experience with depositions and other stand-up activities earlier in my career," Agenbroad said.


He is partner-in-charge of Jones Day's San Francisco office, a role in which he manages the operations of an office of approximately 65 lawyers.


Agenbroad has assisted Google with a number of its most significant labor cases.


"In recent years, I think there has been some erosion in the views of on what issues, and in what areas, businesses retain autonomy on," he said. "That autonomy remains important to companies and so helping them retain the ability to manage their businesses are important." 


Along these lines, a union and a group of employees sought to block the transition of certain contracted-for work to other providers overseas. 


"Such transfers are not an unusual occurrence for many companies across the country, and in this instance had been long planned," Agenbroad said. "Accordingly, demonstrating those facts to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and securing dismissal of the unfair labor practice charge was rewarding."


Additional notable work includes aiding Stanford Health Care in the unionization process of its medical residents and interns, culminating in the negotiation of a first contract without the need for a strike authorization vote or an actual strike. This achievement is particularly significant against the backdrop of a growing union movement among graduate student populations and medical trainees nationwide, which has often led to workplace unrest.


Agenbroad said one of the hurdles was that this union environment was a brand-new employer-employee dynamic for many of the individuals on both sides. 


"Helping the residents and interns to understand what issues were actually bargainable, and which were not, was a threshold issue," he said. "A second issue was helping educate the bargaining teams on how the bargaining process worked from a practical standpoint, and how an agreement could actually be reached. While this educational process is frequently in play in first CBA bargaining, it was particularly acute here where so many individuals had zero experience with represented workforces."


Analyzing trends, Agenbroad said he is seeing the continued efforts to expand the reach of joint employer relationships. 


"Whether through employment litigation, NLRB petitions, or NLRB unfair labor practice charges, there is an increasing effort to not just hold the employer responsible for some alleged violation - but wholly separate entities who did not hire, pay, supervise, or direct those employees," he said.