Alexander Volberding


Liebert Cassidy Whitmore • Los Angeles


Alexander Volberding is an attorney with a robust foundation in labor law, which began to take shape even before he commenced his legal practice in 2016. His expertise in labor law and relations is particularly notable in his work with public agencies across California. 


Before embarking on his legal education at UCLA Law, Volberding served as chief of staff to a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. 


During this tenure, he played a pivotal role in reforming the city's retirement system. Unlike the adversarial tactics employed by many jurisdictions to cut retirement costs, he adopted a collaborative stance with public employee unions, Volberding said. Through months of negotiation and mutual concessions, a consensus proposal was crafted. Volberding said that this proposal preserved the defined benefit retirement plans for employees while also reducing the city's retirement costs and ensuring the continued provision of essential services to residents.


"The ballot measure, which voters adopted, largely addressed the city's structural budget deficit and provided the city billions of dollars in cost-savings that would not have been possible, but for the willingness of all involved to work together and make concessions on all issues, but those most fundamental to their interests," Volberding said. "This work showed me that, by developing relationships across the table and working to understand others' perspectives and their interests, it is possible to develop an approach to solving complex problems that addresses all parties' interests."


Last year, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore was retained to advise a large county in preparation for a threatened strike by a union that represented health care workers at the county, Volberding said. 


He added the strike threatened the public health and safety of the community, as it would have compromised the ability of the county to provide essential health services to those most in need of medical assistance.


"I worked with a team of attorneys at the firm to simultaneously negotiate an agreement with the union that would allow the most critical represented employees to continue working during the threatened strike and to proceed in a legal action against the union in order to prevent the union from engaging in their unlawful economic strike," Volberding said.


He continued. "As a result of the team's actions, the union backed down and away from their threat to strike and the county negotiators were able to ultimately reach an agreement with the union on a contract that maintained the provision of health services to county residents without interruption."


When asked about trends within his area of practice, Volberding said what he is seeing the most are public employee unions threatening to strike earlier on in negotiations rather than near or at the conclusion of the bargaining process.