Advanced Labor Relations

Dan McCray is an expert in workplace negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. As Practice Leader and Director of the Labor Relations Programs, Dan is responsible for developing and teaching professional education programs in negotiations, conflict resolution, collective bargaining for professionals working for unions and employers in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
Dan has taught and facilitated dozens of management and union teams, with a particular emphasis on developing and executing an effective negotiating strategy and the skills of an effective negotiator.

Ellen Gallin Procida is currently the Associate Director of Labor – Management Programs for Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute, ILR School. She teaches Contract Interpretation, Agreement Writing, Effective Discipline, Collective Bargaining, Arbitration Advocacy, Cross Examination and other classes.

Prior to taking on this role, Ms. Gallin Procida taught in the New York City public school system for 20 years. During that time she also worked after school for the UFT Grievance and Arbitration Department. Ellen Gallin Procida became a full time member of the UFT Grievance and Arbitration Department staff and then its Director for 8 years before retiring as of January 1, 2019. As the Director of the UFT’s Grievance Department – and the first woman to hold this important post – Ellen advocated or supervised more than 1,000 arbitrations. Ellen was the lead advocate on numerous arbitrations that had significant impact on the operation of the New York City Public School System. As part of her work in the Grievance and Arbitration Department, Ellen has been training UFT members to be arbitration advocates for more than 20 years. She helped negotiate and implement various expedited arbitration procedures and dispute resolution processes where labor management teams at various levels attempt to resolve issues as the steps prior to arbitration.

Amongst her responsibilities as Assistant to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Ellen was a key member of the UFT Collective Bargaining team and has assisted in the planning, preparation and implementation of the AFT/Cornell Scheinman Institute Collective Bargaining Partnership since its inception.

Sally Klingel is the director of Labor-Management Relations programming for the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.   She specializes in the design and implementation of conflict and negotiation systems, labor-management partnerships, collective bargaining strategies, strategic planning, and leadership development.  Her work with Cornell over the past 20 years has included training, consulting, and research with organizations in a variety of industries, local, state and federal government agencies, union internationals and locals, public schools and universities, and worker owned companies.

Sally Klingel holds a M.S. in Organizational Behavior from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. She has authored articles, monographs and book chapters on innovations in labor-management relations and conflict methods.

Don Savelson is an Optional Service Partner in the Labor & Employment Law Department of Proskauer Rose LLP. Don handles a wide variety of labor and employment matters including EEO, labor arbitrations, collective bargaining, privacy, WARN, NLRA wage/hour, unemployment, ADA, FMLA, Workers’ Compensation, and occupational safety and health matters. Don taught at George Washington University School of Law from 1977 to 1986 while in private practice in Washington and has written and lectured widely for almost 20 years. He co-authored the first law book on OSHA in 1976, entitled “Occupational Safety and Health Law and Practice,” published by the Practising Law Institute, and is a contributor to the ABA-BNA treatise Occupational Safety and Health Law. He has been a faculty member for the Extension Division of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations since 1993. He has been a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Brooklyn Law School for over 20 years, teaching Workplace Privacy and Labor Arbitration classes.

Bruce R. Millman has more than 40 years of experience counseling private and public sector employers on business and personnel strategies. In addition to counseling, Bruce regularly represents clients at the collective bargaining table, in arbitration, and in administrative agency and court litigation. Bruce is a frequent lecturer on public and private sector labor and employment law matters for a wide range of professional and legal organizations, which have included the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the Practising Law Institute. Bruce serves as the office managing shareholder of Littler Mendelson’s New York office. He is a member of Littler’s Publications Review and Associates Committees, the Core Group of the Wage and Hour practice group and the Business Restructuring practice group, and the subcommittees on Release Issues and WARN Issues for the Business Restructuring practice group, as well as the Traditional Labor, Healthcare, International Labor, and other practice groups. Prior to joining Littler, he was the managing partner of a boutique management labor and employment firm and a partner at another firm.

Julie Torrey is an Arbitrator and Mediator handling labor and employment cases involving diverse disciplinary, contract, and statutory issues. She serves on the American Arbitration Association’s Roster of Labor Arbitrators, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s Roster of Arbitrators, the United States District Court’s Arbitration Panel for the Eastern District of New York, the New York City Office of Collective Bargaining Register of Neutrals, and the Cornell ILR National Roster of Neutrals, in addition to serving on party arbitration panels including the Realty Advisory Board and Local 32BJ SEIU Arbitration Panel, the New York City Department of Education and United Federation of Teachers Local 2 AFT-CIO § 3020-a Arbitration Panel, and the New York State Section 3020-a Panel of Arbitrators. Ms. Torrey also volunteers her time on pro bono and volunteer panels, including the New York County Part 137 Arbitration Panel and the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts Mediate Art Panel. She is an active member of the Dispute Resolution Section of the New York State Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, and the Society of Federal Labor & Employee Relations Professionals, and serves as a Board Member of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, Long Island. 

Ms. Torrey received her B.A. in 1992 from Georgetown University, with honors, and her J.D. in 1995 from Georgetown University, with honors. She is a graduate of the Cornell University ILR School Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution’s Labor Arbitrator Development Program. She worked for 20 years in private practice representing clients in all facets of labor-management relations, including collective bargaining agreement negotiations, discipline and contract arbitrations, improper practice proceedings, mediations, fact-finding proceedings, and Commissioner of Education hearings. Ms. Torrey has appeared before PERB, the New York State Division of Human Rights, the EEOC, the NYS Labor Board, and state and federal courts on a variety of labor and employment matters. She has conducted hundreds of workplace investigations, including investigation of harassment, discrimination and retaliation complaints, as well as whistleblower claims. 

Arthur T. Matthews is the Chief Operating Officer and principal partner of Matthews & Matthews Consulting, a boutique firm specializing in divergent aspects of labor, human capital management, and the workforce. His clients are primarily government entities, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and labor unions. Arthur currently serves on the faculty at NYU, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the University of Arkansas. He teaches seminar, certificate, boot camp, undergraduate, MPA and MBA courses in areas such as facilitation, negotiations, mediation, arbitration, labor relations, labor-management cooperation, human resources, organizational change, knowledge transfer, diversity and inclusion, leadership, public speaking, and ethics. Some of Arthur’s union clients include or have included LIUNA, CWA Local 1180, DC 37, AFGE, NLRBU, Teamsters, and the UWUA. Some of his management clients include or have included Dayton Power & Light, JPMorgan Chase, Prudential Securities, and Con Edison. Government clients include or have included the EEOC, the New York State Unified Court System, the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the Federal Executive Board.

Early in his career, Arthur was featured on a CNN special as a positive role model and consistently serves as a motivational speaker. He was a Congressional and Assembly aide and earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Howard University School of Law, where he was elected the President of the Student Bar Association. It was in this capacity that Arthur led hundreds of law students in the march that helped enact MLK Day as a national holiday. Moreover, he proudly cohosted one of the last public appearances of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Arthur obtained his undergraduate degree with honors from C.W. Post College, Long Island University, where he earned a Martin Luther King academic scholarship and a NCAA football scholarship. He is married to his soulmate and business partner Evelyne and they have two sons, Jaleel and Joseph, and a grandson, Jaylen. Arthur is a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.

Martin F. Scheinman (ILR ’75, ’76, JD ’79 New York University) has 40 years of experience as a full-time ad hoc and contract labor-management, employment, business, and consumer arbitrator and mediator in disputes throughout the United States. In New York, he is the industry arbitrator in many settings, including nursing homes, newspapers, trucking and warehousing, education, government services, manufacturing, and transportation. Named in over 200 collective bargaining agreements, Mr. Scheinman has arbitrated over 20,000 disputes, served as fact finder and interest arbitrator in hundreds of cases, and conducted thousands of mediations. Amongst the high-profile cases he has been involved in, Mr. Scheinman mediated the Fox discrimination cases, the dispute between the owners of AriZona Iced Tea, the discrimination disputes at NYC Ballet, the hospital dispute in 2019 which impacted the largest hospital systems in the country, and the 2006 transit strike which crippled the New York City region. He also served as Chair of the Arbitration Board which decided the largest interest arbitration case in New York State history involving all of the educators in New York City, and he is the Chairman of the Interest Arbitration Panel for the thousands of healthcare workers and nurses employed by the Health and Hospital Corporation which oversees healthcare reform covering 1.2 million people.

Lawrence E. Becker (Larry) attended Albany State University and Brooklyn Law school. He has worked for the New York City Department of Education since 1979 where he started as an attorney in the Department’s Office of Legal Services, handling numerous discipline arbitrations and other matters.

In his career at the Department, Mr. Becker served as the Counsel to the Chancellor/Director of the Office of Legal Services, Chief Executive Officer of the Division of Human Resources and most recently as the Chief Executive for Labor Policy.

In his role as Counsel to the Chancellor and Director of the Office of Legal Services Larry supervised a staff of 30 attorneys responsible for all legal issues of the Department including human rights, employee discipline, special education and commercial matters. As head of the Division of Human Resources, he oversaw a 400-person division responsible for a variety of tasks including recruitment and on-boarding of staff, background investigations and health and welfare benefits for Department employees.

During the past several years Larry was a key member of the Department negotiating team for collective bargaining agreements with the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of Supervisors and Administrators working closely with the City Office of Labor Relations.

Larry recently retired but has continued to work for the Department in a consultant capacity. In addition, Larry has been an adjunct professor at Baruch College and Brooklyn College, and is currently an adjunct at Hunter College School of Education.

Debra Osofsky is a skilled Chief Negotiator, Attorney, and Trainer. She leads negotiating teams of all sizes and composition in structured and unstructured scenarios. She also ably represents parties in administrative and court litigation. Ms. Osofsky has demonstrated success in formulating and implementing policy, building consensus among varied stakeholders, and negotiating complex agreements within a variety of organizations. Her specialties include Complex Negotiations, Contract Drafting and Analysis, Training, Advocacy, Executive Leadership, Membership and Employee Development, Policy Development and Implementation, Team Building, Staff Supervision, Problem Solving, and Change Leadership. She teaches a variety of Labor and Employment subjects for the Scheinman Institute of Cornell University, including Labor Law, Fundamentals of Negotiation, Collective Bargaining, Interest-Based Bargaining, and Agreement Drafting. Ms. Osofsky graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Labor Relations and from Harvard Law School with a J.D.

Theodore (Ted) Bennett is currently the Director, National Labor Relations, for Kaiser Permanente, headquartered in Oakland, California. He is responsible for Labor and Employee Relations for Kaiser’s MSSA line of business. Ted has extensive experience working in the fields of Labor Relations and Employment Law, as a law partner and as a strategic legal, labor, and corporate leader responsible for all aspects of human resources within multibillion-dollar global food service, financial, consumer product, service, and industrial companies. Ted previously served as a Senior Labor and Human Resources Executive for several companies, including Nestle Foods Corporation; Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York, Inc.; Comerica Incorporated; Aramark; and The Compass Group.

John Herbert specializes in employment, labor, government contractor, and business law. He has held senior legal and business roles with global Fortune 50 companies in their legal and business department since the late 1970s. He currently heads up a major Northeast U.S. law firm that focuses on employment, labor, immigration, federal government contract, and E.O. 11246/375 affirmative action regulatory law. John is also a very callable labor relations and business lawyer.