Arthur Traynor's practice is primarily devoted to representing local and international unions in collective bargaining negotiations and contract disputes, organizing disputes, health and safety matters, defamation, wage and hour cases, and other litigation. He has an active appellate practice and has argued on behalf of unions, organized workers, and retirees in numerous federal and state courts of appeal.

Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Traynor served as a Presidentially nominated, Senate confirmed Commissioner on the Federal Mine Safety & Health Review Commission, reviewing appeals from decisions of administrative law judges enforcing the nation's mine safety laws. In one such case, a federal appellate court adopted the logic of Commissioner Traynor's dissent to overrule his fellow Commissioners' opinion undermining legislation providing enhanced penalties for mine operators whose safety violations put miners at risk of bodily injury or death. Northshore Mining Co. v. Fed. Mine Safety & Health Rev. Comm'n, 46 F.4th 718 (8th Cir. 2022).

For ten years prior to his government service, Mr. Traynor represented active and retired coal miners, eventually becoming the attorney chiefly responsible for representing the United Mine Workers of America at the bargaining table and before federal courts and agencies. As Associate General Counsel to the UMWA, Mr. Traynor worked with lawyers at the Firm on agreements with investors purchasing bankrupt multinational coal companies to contribute millions of dollars to temporarily fund health benefits for their retired miners and actively lobby for federal legislation that permanently funded those benefits. And he obtained from a West Virginia court an injunction prohibiting the world's largest energy company from cutting retiree health benefits to thousands of miners across the country. Mine Workers v. CONSOL Energy, Inc., 243 F. Supp. 3d 755, 758 (S.D.W. Va. 2017). He also persuaded the West Virginia Supreme Court to reverse a decision of the state disciplinary board failing to hold accountable a lawyer who deceived a pro se black lung claimant, resulting in the attorney's law license being suspended for one year. Lawyer Disciplinary Bd. v. Smoot, 228 W. Va. 1, 716 S.E.2d 491 (2010).

Mr. Traynor is a lifelong partisan for workers organized for collective bargaining. As an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, he volunteered with a campaign to organize the non-faculty staff. Immediately after graduation he traveled the country as an organizer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU until attending law school at the University of Indiana, Bloomington on merit scholarship. After law school graduation, Mr. Traynor briefly worked as an attorney for the International Association of Fire Fighters, a role he proudly resumes with the Firm.

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