| Mark Hutcheson is a veteran labor and employment law attorney who helps employers in a wide variety of industries reduce and control labor costs. He has extensive experience in labor relations counseling and in assisting employers with strategic labor planning, union organizing campaigns, collective bargaining and strike planning. Mark regularly assists senior executives and employers with executive employment agreements and severance packages.
Practice Highlights
- Assists clients throughout the United States on strategic labor relations planning. Client industries include health care, maritime, communications and media, financial services, construction and real estate, transportation and distribution, hospitality, agribusiness and retail.
- Serves as outside labor counsel to numerous hospitals and other health care organizations on the West Coast.
- Assists buyers and sellers dealing with labor and employment law issues in merger and acquisition transactions.
- Serves as chief spokesperson for employers in collective bargaining.
- Helps non-union employers remain union free.
Selected Experience Provided strategic labor relations planning advice to media client with 12 different bargaining units undergoing significant transformation of its business. The specifics are highly confidential and on-going and extremely complex. Strike exposure is high. Client has achieved savings in labor and capital costs in the millions. This project has been underway since 2006 and is currently ongoing. (Ongoing) Assisting local television broadcaster with negotiating, in a down economy, multiple new labor agreements with minimal or no economic increases and major improvements in contract language, including far stronger management rights and no strike provisions and a better grievance procedure. (Ongoing) Representing an airline with multiple bargaining units covered by the Railway Labor Act deal with grievances, arbitrations, agency charges and litigation. (Ongoing) Negotiation of first collective bargaining agreements with union covering two units state-wide. Issues included a complex and difficult wage and hour law issue. Both of the units were lawfully 'decertified' without an election and without unfair labor practice charges. Client is now union free. (2010) Helped newspaper client in Portland, Maine deal with a complicated successorship issue that impacted a pending sale of the business. A related lawsuit and an arbitration case were satisfactorily resolved. (2009) Successful negotiation of first collective bargaining agreement with SEIU 1199NW after years of litigation involving which union would represent this bargaining unit and the scope of the unit. A successful outcome was achieved without a strike utilizing interest-based bargaining technique. (2008) Successful deunionization of a radio station in Southern California without an election or a hearing. No unfair labor practice charges or grievances were filed. (2007) Assisted a private employer with development of a strategy to control and eliminate a large multimillion-dollar unfunded defined benefit pension plan obligation. The retirement plan covers 50,000 employees; the employer has operations in five different states and 43 different labor agreements. Represented a large HMO in the simultaneous negotiation of multiple labor agreements covering state-wide bargaining units using the Interest Based Bargaining approach. The new agreements included favorable outcomes with respect to freezing the under-funded defined benefit retirement plan and elimination of expensive retiree medical benefits. Additional Qualifications Professional and Community Activities
- Labor and Employment Law and Health Law Sections, American Bar Association
- Employment Law Section, King County Bar Association
- Labor Relations Advisory Committee, American Hospital Association
- Member and Past President, LAW Fund
- Board Member and President, Endowment for Equal Justice
- Board Member, International Development of the Law Organization, USA (IDLO-USA)
- Fellow, College of Labor and Employment Lawyers
- Fellow, American Bar Foundation (life member)
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Professional Recognition
- Named as one of "America's Leading Lawyers for Business" in Labor and Employment (Washington) by Chambers USA, 2003-2011
- Named as one of the “Best Lawyers in America” in Labor and Employment Law by Woodward/White, 1983-present
- Selected to "Washington Super Lawyers," Law & Politics, 1999-2010
- President's Award, Washington State Bar Association, 2010
- Named one of "The Nation's 100 Most Powerful Employment Attorneys" in Human Resource Executive magazine, in list prepared by Lawdragon, 2010-2011
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Education J.D., University of Washington School of Law, 1967
- Order of the Coif
- Recent Developments Editor, Washington Law Review
- 1st Nelson T. Hartson Scholar
B.A., University of Puget Sound, 1964 | |