Joel D'Alba is one of the firm’s senior managing shareholders and has been in practice since 1971.  He has been with the firm for over 40 years and he has devoted his entire professional life to representing working people, both through union representation and as individual clients.  Joel is also frequently consulted for his opinions concerning internal and administrative union affairs.  While he has represented clients from just about every segment of the private sector, much of his work has centered on the representation of union clients in the public sector, where Joel serves as counsel for many firefighter and police unions.  He is considerably experienced in handling contract negotiations, grievance arbitrations and interest arbitrations.  Further, he is extremely well-versed in all aspects of state labor law.  In fact, he played an instrumental role in drafting the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act, which is one of two state laws granting collective bargaining rights and labor protection to state and municipal employees throughout Illinois.

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When Joel is not representing unions, he represents individual employees in the more traditional settings of employment discrimination, wage and hour litigation, and severance and contract negotiations.  That said, Joel has a well-established record of success in pursuing what some may characterize as non-traditional, atypical and even novel claims on behalf of his individual clients.  Regardless of the setting, however, Joel works tirelessly to advance the interests of working people.

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Joel ranks among the most distinguished and respected labor attorneys in the country.  That much is best demonstrated by his roles in two very important organizations: (1) the American Bar Association’s Section of Labor and Employment Law, and (2) the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.  Between August 2013 and August 2014, Joel served as the Chair of the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law.  In doing so, Joel traveled throughout the country and overseas in an effort to promote the Section’s agenda, which, at times, required his authorship concerning the Section’s policy recommendations directed to high-level officials in the U.S. Department of Labor and the White House.  His rise to Section Chair represented the culmination of several decades of important volunteer work within the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law and particularly, that Section’s Committee on State and Local Government Bargaining and Employment Law, where he served as the Union Co-chair from 1988 to 1994.  Joel has played an active role in that Committee for over 35 years.

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