Henry F. Murray

Hank Murray practices labor and employment law representing individuals in employment discrimination and civil rights matters and both private sector and public sector unions on legal issues related to organizing, collective bargaining and contract enforcement. He joined the law firm of Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn & Kelly in 1996 after spending almost thirty years in the labor movement including twenty years as a senior official in the United Auto Workers union. Hank is a summa cum laude graduate of the University Of Connecticut School Of Law where he was a Blumberg Scholar. He received his B.A., cum laude, from Yale College where he majored in History and Philosophy. He is admitted to practice in the state courts of Connecticut, the United States District Court for Connecticut, the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Since 2000 he has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University Of Connecticut School Of Law where he teaches courses on labor law, orbanizing, collective bargaining and international labor and human rights. He has written and lectured on a wide variety of labor and employment law matters and is regularly recognized as a Super Lawyer in Connecticut for labor and employment law.

Prior to joining the law firm, Hank was on the international staff of the United Auto Workers union serving as the union’s principal negotiator in a number of industries including machine tool, bearings and ship building. As both a UAW official and attorney he has negotiated hundreds of national and local collective bargaining agreements in both the private and public sector, represented unions in arbitration, administrative proceedings, including before the National Labor Relations Board, and in state and federal courts. A former skilled tradesman and merchant seaman, Hank shipped out at sixteen as an apprentice seaman and worked for the next eight years, during and after college, as a journeyman sailor and member of both the Seafarers International Union and the Sailors Union of the Pacific. Returning to Connecticut in the 1970s, he went to work as a millwright in an aerospace machine tool factory and joined the UAW.

A nationally recognized authority on union democracy, internal union election procedures and compliance issues, Hank was special assistant to the first court-appointed election officer in the Teamsters union and since that time has organized, conducted and supervised hundreds of local, regional, national and international elections for dozens of international unions as well as serving as a court appointed special master overseeing international union delegate elections, nominating conventions and rank-and-file voting.

On individual employment matters, Hank regularly represents and advises clients on a variety of matters from severance negotiation, appeals at civil service review boards as well as litigation in administrative agencies, trial and appellate courts on employment discrimination claims involving age, race, national origin, sex and disability, retaliation, wage and hour claims, whistleblower protection claims, employment contract disputes, and First Amendment matters.

Hank has extensive experience representing unions in the private sector, including, among others, the United Auto Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Steelworkers, Amalgamaged Transit Union, UNITEHERE, the Communications Workers and the Service Employees International Union as well as a number of smaller independent unions. He also represents numerous public sector unions in negotiations, contract and interest arbitrations including unions for municipal fire and police, public school nurses, school administrators, state employees, faculty unions at the Connecticut State University System and employees of the University of Connecticut Health Center.

He is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Employment and Labor section, a member of both the National and Connecticut Employment Lawyers Association (NELA & CELA), a member of the Hartford County Bar Association and the AFL-CIO’s Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC). He has also been active for many years in labor, community and progressive organizations including serving on the boards of the Connecticut Lung Association, the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF), the Connecticut Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (ConnCOSH), and, for the past thirty years he has been president of the board of the Connecticut Citizens Research Group (CCRG). He and his family have lived in Hartford’s West End neighborhood for the past thirty five years where they are active in community revitalization efforts