Keahn Morris is a partner in the Labor and Employment Practice Group in the firm's San Francisco office and is a team leader of the firm's national Traditional Labor Law Team.
Keahn represents clients across the country in court, in negotiations, and in proceedings before federal and state administrative agencies. Keahn provides strategic labor and employment advice to companies, boards of directors/trustees, senior executives and general counsel. Keahn's practice encompasses labor/management relations, crisis management, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) unfair labor practice and representation proceedings, single plaintiff and class action litigation, and labor-related advice for mergers, acquisitions, startups, reorganizations, and development projects. Keahn is an experienced trial lawyer, having represented employers in 75+ trials and arbitrations before judges, arbitrators, and various administrative agencies. Keahn's clients include industry leading organizations in the Fortune 100, not-for-profits, and employers in the public sphere. He represents clients in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, energy, aerospace and defense, media and entertainment, technology, education, sports, entertainment venues and arenas, hospitality, food and beverage, retail, transportation, manufacturing, building and construction, and cannabis.
Labor Advice and Litigation
Keahn has extensive experience across the entire union/labor field. He has successfully handled some of the largest, most complex labor/management relations disputes and issues confronting employers, including their responses to evolving economic, legal, and political changes, as well as employee relations unrest generated by these changes.
Keahn represents employers at the bargaining table and in strategic support roles for first and successor collective bargaining agreements. He has negotiated hundreds of labor agreements with unions and union councils in nearly all industries, including high-stakes collective bargaining agreements, industry-wide contracts, project labor agreements (state, county, and local level), community workforce and training agreements, labor peace agreements, and political alliances with labor organizations when desirable to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
Keahn also has extensive experience providing employers with strategic representation related to union organizing campaigns and "corporate campaigns." He has guided employers of all sizes through complicated labor relations issues involving union elections, union decertifications, lockouts, rapid response tactics to economic warfare (e.g., strikes, pickets, and boycotts), and other high pressure union events by nearly all of the major unions in the U.S., as well as many grass roots employee associations, spin-offs from the major U.S. unions, and union-backed "coalitions" and "worker centers."
Keahn has broad experience representing employers in arbitration, proceedings and litigation related to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the Railway Labor Act (RLA), and state labor relations laws. He represents clients in proceedings before the NLRB, National Mediation Board (NMB), and state labor relations boards (e.g., Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB)). Keahn is an expert on labor preemption, labor injunctions, and union boycotts, and has successfully sued unions on behalf of employers for engaging in illegal labor activity, including recently obtaining a decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is now a leading case concerning illegal boycotts and hot cargo agreements under the NLRA.
Business Acquisitions, Restructuring, and Development Projects
Keahn provides strategic advice on labor-related issues that arise in the context of corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, startups, downsizing, reorganization, relocation, turn-around work, and development projects. He regularly works with corporate clients to guide them in structuring transactions to minimize risk and maximize the value and success of those transactions from a labor, employment, and employee benefits perspective. This includes transaction planning, due diligence, deal documentation, managing actual or potential labor agreements, re-negotiation of labor agreements, pre- and post-closing integration activities, and ensuring employees easily transition from one employer to another. Keahn regularly collaborates with leading mergers and acquisitions corporate lawyers, private equity firms, developers, and management consultants on such engagements.
Employment Advice and Litigation
Keahn represents employers in employment actions before state and federal trial and appellate courts and arbitrators. He litigates disputes involving wage and hour class actions, Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) actions, whistleblowing, wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, breach of contract, unfair competition, and related claims. Keahn represents clients before federal and state administrative agencies, including the Department of Labor (DOL), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), California Civil Rights Department (CRD), and California Labor Commissioner's Office/Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), and other human rights commissions and labor agencies.
Keahn also provides strategic advice on labor and employment-related risk management, including conducting effective workplace investigations, workforce planning, employee recruiting and hiring practices, harassment prevention and investigation, wage and hour compliance, pay equity, employee mobility, and alternative dispute resolution.