October 28, 2003
NEW IN-HOUSE COUNSEL,
LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE BEGINS DUTIES
Attorney Joanne Koslofsky, who
comes to the Newspaper Guild of New York from the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and
Education Fund (PRLDEF), began her Guild duties recently as in-house counsel and
local representative. Before working as staff attorney at PRLDEF, she was a
staff attorney at the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union (UE)
in Pittsburgh.
“Joanne is a welcome addition
to the staff,” New York Guild President Barry Lipton noted. “She brings with
her a lot of experience and we all look forward to working with her.”
A native of the Bronx,
Koslofsky was well respected at UE for her work in connection with a National
Labor Relations Board case brought against The Electric Materials Company in
North East, Pa. Charges in that case stemmed from the bargaining of a
first-contract after UE had organized the company.
“When we went to hearing,
there were well over 70 unfair labor practice allegations to be decided,”
Joanne recalled. “The company conduct at issue ranged from firing, layoff, and
other discipline of union activists to unilateral changes in the terms and
conditions of employment, to bad-faith bargaining at the table.”
Because the case was so complex
and Joanne had a more intimate knowledge of certain issues than lawyers for the
NLRB did, she played a much more significant role at trial than is customary for
a union attorney.
“We got an incredibly
favorable decision,” Joanne said.
She just recently learned that
her late uncle, Henry Fiering, was one of the organizers who founded UE.
She left UE in Pittsburgh to
return to New York City.
She had been looking for a job
in New York in which she would be “intellectually challenged and (would have)
the ability to fight for social justice at the same time.” She thinks she has
found it with the Newspaper Guild of New York.
Joanne spent her college years
at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton. She got a master’s
degree at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her training as a
lawyer came at CUNY Law School at Queens College.
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10/28/03