Mooney Green has extensive legislative experience and has been involved in many notable – and successful — legislative efforts, including the recent legislation that preserved the pension benefits of over a million union retirees by providing direct financial assistance to their multiemployer pension plans. Similarly, Mooney Green has been at the center of the legislative efforts that preserved the pension and health benefits of hundreds of thousands of retired coal miners and their families. Mooney Green attorneys have routinely drafted legislation in the fields of our expertise, we have assisted in the preparation of testimony before Congressional committees and have worked closely with Congressional staff and officials in the Executive Branch to help advance the interests of our clients through the legislative process.
Our attorneys have also routinely assisted our clients in work with federal agencies in the regulatory process. We have worked closely with multiple agencies, including the Departments of Labor and Treasury, as well as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Members of the Firm have regularly drafted comments on Notices of Proposed Rulemaking and in response to agency Requests for Information, helped to prepare testimony before federal agencies in the regulatory process, and have testified as well.
Mooney Green attorneys also advocate on behalf of rail unions before the President of the United States, Congress, senior White House staff, Cabinet Secretaries, and the leadership of independent federal agencies. We represent individual rail unions, coalitions of unions, and sometimes speak on behalf of all of rail labor. Issues we work on include, rail safety, efficacy of freight and passenger rail transportation, rail industry collective bargaining, and protections for rail and transit workers in connection with federal grants. Mooney Green has decades of experience in negotiating with the Chairs of relevant Congressional Committees to include rail union priorities in various Surface Transportation and Amtrak reauthorization bills. We supported rail unions in negotiations with the Administration over the conclusion of the most recent round of freight rail collective bargaining that ended in a Presidential Emergency Board (“PEB”) and the imposition of the PEB’s recommendations by Congress.
Additionally, the Firm has assisted clients in their legislative and regulatory efforts at the state level. For example, the Firm participated in the Maryland legislative commission that led to the adoption of the MarylandSaves Program, Maryland’s automatic IRA program for employees who have no other workplace retirement savings option, and one of our attorneys continues to sit on its Board.
- Rich Edelman speaking at a Surface Transportation Board hearing on urgent issues concerning freight rail service.