Melanie Webber is a partner in the firm’s Cleveland office and serves as chair of the firm’s Women’s Initiative and Leadership Council. She represents and advises clients in all aspects of employment matters and labor relations.

Over her career, she has also represented employers on traditional labor issues such as union organizing campaigns, unfair labor practice charges and labor arbitrations—before administrative agencies that include the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC).

Union avoidance has been at the heart of Melanie’s practice for years. Melanie has significant experience in advising clients during union organizing campaigns, including helping her clients avoid union activity through her work in identifying workplace issues and creating strategies to effectively address those issues. Melanie oversees our Cleveland office’s HR practices group, which assists employers with their union prevention strategies utilizing employee engagement surveys, advising employers about establishing and conducting lawful employee roundtables and providing supervisor and manager training on employee relations strategies.

Melanie has defended non-union and unionized employers in unfair labor practice and representation election proceedings before numerous NLRB regions. She also has experience in grievance arbitrations. Melanie will be assisting with efforts to prepare non-union facilities for organizing activity and with guiding the organization’s response to organizing where it may occur.

Melanie believes in developing positive, proactive employee relations programs (including employee opinion surveys) with her clients and can guide them through employment practice, human resource and wage-hour audits.

In addition, she helps clients develop employment handbooks and personnel policies and procedures and provides them with valuable insight regarding potential human resource issues throughout the life cycle of employment.

An engaging speaker, Melanie frequently conducts supervisor and management trainings for employers, as well as presentations to her peers on a variety of employment law issues, including maintaining union-free status, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), sexual harassment and managing employees under a union contract.

Before practicing law, Melanie worked in human resources management at two Northeast Ohio area manufacturing companies.