About
Matt Austin is an attorney who counsels and defends companies in traditional labor, employment, and OSHA matters.
Matt has a reputation as a skilled labor lawyer who represents clients on every aspect of dealing with labor unions. He trains employers on staying union-free and guides them through union organizing campaigns and elections. Matt negotiates contracts and handles grievances and arbitrations, conducts strike planning, and responds when employees engage in economic pressure techniques like strikes, slow-downs, and sick-outs. When appropriate, Matt represents companies during decertification campaigns and withdraws recognition of unions. Simply put, Matt Austin has experienced just about every area of labor relations.
Matt’s employment practice remains vital to his client’s success. He handles discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, and hostile work environment claims, breach of contract issues, high-stakes wage misclassification matters, and others. Matt started as an employment lawyer before narrowing his niche to traditional labor law but has never stopped defending companies against employment claims.
Matt Austin’s OSHA practice naturally grew out of helping his traditional labor clients, but now it represents a significant portion of his practice. OSHA regulations cover most companies, even office settings, though few consider how OSHA impacts their workplaces. Matt helps companies comply with OSHA regulations, assists during OSHA investigations, and represents employers involved in OSHA litigation. Few attorneys regularly handle OSHA claims, and even fewer have an OSHA 10-hour card, like Matt.
Matt prides himself on being a “counselor at law.” He keeps clients abreast of new laws and court rulings affecting their businesses and guides them in reacting to those changes. He routinely reviews corporate policies to ensure “best practices” regarding labor relations, hiring, work rules, safety, discipline, leaves of absence, wages, and terminations. Businesses and human resource departments regularly use Matt as a sounding board – just to make sure they’re doing it right.