Overview
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 and Co-Chair of the Crisis Communications & Strategy Practice Group. She represents and advises clients in all aspects of HR, employment and labor relations matters, including FMLA, ADA, FLSA and NLRA compliance, leaves of absence, terminations, severance agreements, reductions-in-force, wage-hour and employment practices audits, and supervisor and manager training.
Over her career, she has represented and advised many employers on traditional labor issues and has significant experience guiding clients during union organizing campaigns, including helping her clients with union awareness by identifying workplace issues and creating strategies to effectively address them.
Melanie also has defended non-union and unionized employers in unfair labor practice and representation election proceedings before numerous NLRB regions across the country. She also has experience in handling grievance arbitrations and negotiating collective bargaining agreements.
Melanie believes in developing positive, proactive employee relations programs (including employee engagement surveys) with her clients and can guide them through employment practices, HR and wage-hour audits.
As Co-Chair of the Crisis Communications & Strategy Practice Group, Melanie regularly works with organizations – from family-owned companies to global corporations and everything in between – to plan for, respond to, and move past business disruptions and crises: governmental investigations, cyberattacks, employment litigation, union activity, allegations of executive misconduct, workplace accidents, and more.
In addition, she helps clients develop practical and lawful personnel policies and procedures and provides them with valuable insight regarding potential HR issues throughout the employment life cycle.
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 FMLA, the ADA, the FLSA, harassment prevention, and managing employees under a union contract.
Before practicing law, Melanie worked in human resources management at two Northeast Ohio area manufacturing companies.