John R. Mooney
About
Since starting in the profession in 1982, John Mooney’s practice has been primarily devoted to advising unions in both the private and public sector on a wide array of labor and employment issues, including local, intermediate and international unions. His practice also includes the representation of employee benefit plans. Long recognized as an expert in labor law and union-side labor relations, including collective bargaining and internal union affairs, Mr. Mooney was selected as a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and is listed as one of the Super Lawyers in the District of Columbia. He completed his undergraduate studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and received his law degree from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University where he was a member of the Law Review.
Mr. Mooney’s practice has taken him before the full range of adjudicative bodies. In addition to representing labor organizations before the National Labor Relations Board, Mr. Mooney regularly participates in litigation and arbitration on behalf of his clients. In particular, he has been extensively involved in federal litigation in courts throughout the country seeking to protect retiree health care in the coal industry. To that end, he has been involved in numerous cases at each level of the federal system and participated in collective bargaining matters involving retiree health care. Over the course of the last 15 years, these cases consumed a significant amount of his time and the successful conclusion of these matters is one of his most significant accomplishments. In addition to the federal court litigation involving retiree health care, he has also had extensive involvement in complex federal RICO and state defamation cases. Most notable was the successful representation of United Mine Workers of America before the United States Supreme Court in the matter of Eastern Associated Coal Company v. United Mine Workers of America.
Mr. Mooney currently serves as the General Counsel of the Strategic Organizing Center (“SOC”), formerly known as Change to Win. The SOC is a democratic coalition of national and international labor unions and represents more than 4 million workers.
Although actively practicing throughout this period, Mr. Mooney has also been committed to the legal education of law students as well as practitioners. Starting in 1985, he was a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University teaching a course in the labor-management areas of pension law. After teaching at Catholic University for five years, he taught various labor law school classes, both undergraduate and postgraduate, at Georgetown University Law Center for 10 years. He has also presented papers at numerous conferences on a variety of labor law and litigation topics including presentations to the International Foundation of Employee Benefits, the AFL-CIO Lawyers Conference and the International Conference of Teamsters Lawyers. He has presented papers on Electronically Stored Information and E-Discovery at the Teamster Lawyers’ Conference in 2007, the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law’s CLE Conferences in 2008, 2012 and 2013 and the AFL-CIO Lawyers’ Conference in May, 2009.