Tom Meiklejohn has been a lawyer in the labor and employment field since 1977. Tom received his B.A. from Yale University in 1973 and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He immediately went to work for the National Labor Relations Board, serving as a Field Attorney, Trial Specialist and Supervising Attorney. He joined Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn & Kelly in 1989, where he has represented both unions and individuals with respect to a wide variety of employment-related issues. He is a member of the bar of the Connecticut Supreme Court, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second and the District of Columbia Circuits as well as the United States Supreme Court, and he has appeared before the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Massachusetts District Court. Tom also served for two years as adjunct professor of labor law at Western New England Law School and has spoken on employment and labor law issues at professional seminars and national conferences. His article critiquing NLRB decisions concerning union organizer job applicants was published in Summer 2008 in the ABA Journal, The Labor Lawyer. In addition, Tom is regularly and consistently recognized as a Super Lawyer in Connecticut for Labor & Employment law.
Tom has represented individuals from a wide range of backgrounds in a variety of legal areas. His clients have included corporate officers, professional employees and government officials as well as drivers, factory workers and mechanics. He advises employees with ongoing employment disputes, negotiates severance agreements and litigates employment issues before administrative agencies and in the courts. He has litigated cases involving age, race, national origin and sex discrimination, the Americans With Disabilities Act, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, whistleblower protection, First Amendment rights and other civil rights issues, and employment contract issues. He has won six figure jury verdicts and settlements in employment and retaliatory discharge cases. Tom has extensive experience representing and advising unions with respect to administrative proceedings, arbitrations, contract negotiations and administration, and court litigation. Tom has extensive experience representing and advising unions with respect to administrative proceedings, arbitrations, contract negotiations and administration, and court litigation. He regularly represents or provides advice to affiliates of the United Steelworkers of America, United Automobile Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the IAM, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the Sheet Metal Workers Union, the Communications Workers of America, AFSCME, the Musicians Union, and college faculty unions. He has worked with unions in devising and defending creative and progressive organizing and negotiating tactics and has won significant legal victories involving such issues. Tom has also successfully handled difficult and extensive litigation arising out of plant sales and closings, including an NLRB case against Allied Signal that generated more than $18 million for employees who lost their jobs due to a plant closing.
Tom led the firm's extensive legal efforts in front of the NLRB in representing the UAW and its successful organizing campaign at Foxwoods Resort Casino, resulting in a collective bargaining agreement covering the largest unit of table game and poker dealers in the country, as well as the largest organized unit of employees on a Native American reservation. He is now working with the UFCW in connection with their efforts to achieve the same type of success in representing bartenders and beverage servers at Foxwoods. Tom is also representing a union of graduate student workers at NYU who are seeking to restore the bargaining relationship that they had established before the Bush administration took away their legal rights