WES KENNEDY
EDUCATION:
B.A., with Honors, Grinnell College, 1981
J.D., Yale Law School, 1984
BAR ADMISSIONS:
Supreme Court of Illinois
U.S. Supreme Court
U.S. Courts of Appeals, Seventh, Eighth, D.C. Circuits
U.S. District Courts, Northern District of Illinois, Central District of Illinois, Eastern District of Wisconsin, District of Arizona, District of Colorado, District of Minnesota
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:
Fellow, College of Labor and Employment Lawyers
Fellow, American Bar Association
Union Co-Chair, ABA Labor & Employment Law Section Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution (2018-Present)
Advisory Board, Kenneth Piper Lecture, Chicago Kent College of Law
Member, ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law
Member, AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee
Member, Labor & Employment Relations Association (LERA)
Member, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
LERA Chicago Chapter, Distinguished Service Award (2017)
Frequent speaker at bar association and other conferences.
PUBLICATIONS:
Union Co-Associate Editor, How Arbitration Works (BNA) (2017 and subsequent Supplements)
"Intermittent Strikes: An Overview From The Union Perspective," 14 The Labor Lawyer 117 (1998)
Co-Author, "Twenty-Five Years of Developments in the Law Under the National Labor Relations Act," 25 ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 299 (2010)
Co-Author, "A Touch of ‘Class' – Immigration and the Intersection of Politics and Protected Section 7 Activity," 23 The Labor Lawyer 99 (2007)
Co-Author, “Seniority Integration in the Absence of Mandatory Labor Protective Provisions,” Cleared for Takeoff: Airline Labor Relations Since Deregulation (ILR Press 1988)
Contributing Author, The Railway Labor Act (BNA)(1995)
Contributing Author, Discipline and Discharge in Arbitration (BNA)(1998 and 1999 Supplement)
Contributing Author, The Developing Labor Law (BNA)(4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Editions and Annual Supplements)
WES KENNEDY
Wes Kennedy has spent his career as an advocate for workers rights. For more than 30 years, he has represented unions, benefit funds and employees – since 1995 as a founding shareholder in Allison, Slutsky & Kennedy, P.C.; and before that as an associate and partner with the firm Cotton, Watt, Jones & King. Wes has represented clients in the hospitality, transportation, graphic arts, education, construction and other industries. In addition to general advice and counseling and collective bargaining, Mr. Kennedy has represented clients in matters before various federal and state courts, and federal, state, and local administrative agencies. For a number years, Wes has devoted much of his practice to representing unions and employees in all manner of grievance and other arbitrations involving contract interpretation and discipline/discharge issues; and in interest arbitrations including complex proceedings arising from the integration of seniority and other rights in mergers and similar transactions.