Mark Richard
Featured LawyerLabor Law
9360 Sunset Drive, 283, Miami, FL 33173
Mark Richard is a founding partner of the firm. For more than 30 years, he has dedicated his career to union workers, handling strategic and corporate campaigns as well as NLRB, PERC and arbitration proceedings. He became involved with the labor movement in 1975, when he took his first labor union position as the South Florida Boycott Organizing Director for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers of America (“UFW”). In that capacity, coordinated the grape and lettuce boycott in South Florida. Mark Richard’s legal career is dedicated to representing solely labor unions. He has been involved in public and private sector organizing, bargaining, and coalition building for over three decades. He has been involved in negotiating over more than 250 collective bargaining agreements in both the public and private sector. These include contracts for state and local government employees, teachers and paraprofessionals, college professors, attending and resident physicians, nurses, social workers, fire and public safety professionals, aviation employees, and multiple other AFT units. Additionally, he was involved in bargaining over the contract for the first unionized charter school in Florida. Mr. Richard has also conducted strategic contract campaigns for many unions including TWU Local 556 (Southwest Airlines flight attendants), APFA (American Airlines flight attendants), IFPTE (United Airlines engineers), PFAA (Northwest flight attendants) and TWU Local 553 (Eastern Airlines flight attendants). From 2003 to 2005 Mr. Richard was appointed by the American Federation of Teachers as administrator to coordinate the strategic recovery and restructure of the United Teachers of Dade (“UTD”). UTD represents over 30,000 educators serving Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the 4th largest school system in America. Mr. Richard was the chief negotiator for three rounds of bargaining with the school system and the lead strategist for the union’s contract campaign. In 2009, he was appointed as an administrator for AFT healthcare local in Portland, Oregon which represents 3000 medical professionals employed at Kaiser Permanente. Mr. Richard’s dedication to the law does not end at the courthouse steps. At Miami-Dade Community College, he progressed through the faculty ranks, obtaining a position as a full professor in the Legal Assistant Department. Mark retained his role in that capacity until last year. While on the faculty, he successfully organized an AFT professors’ local union in 1998 and served as its founding Local President for 18 years.
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