Labor & Employment

Overview

The Labor & Employment practice represents Connecticut employers in the disputes, investigations, and advisory matters that occupy a modern HR department's hardest days. The group is chaired by Norman Cavanaugh, an equity partner who previously served as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage & Hour Division and has been a Connecticut Super Lawyer every year since 2012.

Discrimination defense is the largest segment of the docket. We represent employers in charges before the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) and the EEOC, in federal-court Title VII and CFEPA actions, and in state-court retaliation and wrongful-discharge claims. Connecticut's anti-discrimination statute sweeps broader than federal law in several respects — lower employer-count thresholds, different damage schemes, and the CHRO's post-2019 jurisdiction over sexual-harassment training compliance — and the practice is built around those state-level contours.

Workplace investigations have grown into a standalone service. When a senior executive is accused of harassment, when anonymous allegations surface in an engagement survey, or when a whistleblower hotline receives a credible complaint, a Board or GC often wants independent counsel to conduct the investigation. The group handles that work under engagement letters that preserve privilege and produce written findings on a defined timeline. Associate Glacia Delgado, a Quinnipiac Law summa cum laude graduate, handles a significant portion of the investigation docket.

Union matters remain a steady part of the practice. Manufacturing clients in the Connecticut River Valley face periodic organizing campaigns, grievance arbitrations, and collective-bargaining negotiations. We represent employers through NLRB representation proceedings, unfair-labor-practice defense, first-contract negotiations, and — when the situation demands — Section 10(j) and injunctive proceedings. The practice has deep familiarity with Regional 01 (Boston) and the practice of the current Board.

Wage and hour compliance and litigation is a third concentration. Connecticut's wage-payment statute (Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 31-71a et seq.) carries double damages and attorney's fees for unpaid wages, and the state's independent-contractor test under the Department of Labor's ABC standard is among the strictest in the country. We defend wage-payment claims, respond to CTDOL audits, and counsel on worker-classification restructurings.

Non-compete and trade-secret matters, reductions in force, executive-compensation arrangements, and ERISA benefits counsel fill out the group's work. Much of what the practice does is preventive — employee handbooks, Connecticut-specific policy reviews, pay-equity audits under the state's 2021 pay-transparency law — because a solid policy regime is cheaper than the litigation it avoids.