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Practices  /  Employment

Employment

Practice group · Eight lawyers · Chair, Helen Marchetti

Harwell Brandt’s Employment Group is handed the problems that come with having employees: a charge of discrimination, a wage claim brought on behalf of a whole warehouse, a manager who resigned and took the customer list, a handbook that no longer matches Pennsylvania or Philadelphia law. Eight lawyers advise employers before a dispute starts and defend them once it does, before federal, state and city agencies and in the state and federal courts. The group represents employers only.

What the group is handed

  1. Charges of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. In Philadelphia one complaint can run on three tracks: federal law before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance before the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. The deadlines differ: 300 days to file with the EEOC, 180 days with the state commission. A claim under the state statute must stay with the commission for a year before the employee can sue on it, unless the commission dismisses it sooner. The group writes every position statement on the assumption that it will be an exhibit in the lawsuit that follows.

  2. Wage and hour claims. Collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, class actions under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, and claims under the Wage Payment and Collection Law for unpaid wages, commissions and bonuses. Pennsylvania’s statute does not always track federal law: the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has held that the state law has no de minimis exception, so a few unpaid minutes at the start and end of each shift can become a class claim. Where no good-faith dispute explains the nonpayment, the Wage Payment and Collection Law adds liquidated damages of 25 percent of the wages due or $500, whichever is greater, along with attorney’s fees, and can reach corporate officers who took an active part in the decision not to pay.

  3. Philadelphia’s own employment law. The city regulates more than the Commonwealth does. Its Fair Workweek law covers retail, food service and hospitality employers with at least 250 employees and 30 locations worldwide, and requires good faith estimates of hours, fourteen days’ advance notice of schedules, and predictability pay for late changes. City law also requires paid sick leave and limits what an employer may ask applicants about their salary history and criminal records. The city’s Office of Worker Protections investigates on complaint and on its own initiative.

  4. Departing employees and restrictive covenants. Drafting non-competition, non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements that Pennsylvania courts will enforce, and enforcing or defending them when an employee leaves; the injunction hearings are tried with the Litigation Group. Since January 1, 2025, Pennsylvania’s Fair Contracting for Health Care Practitioners Act has limited new non-competes for physicians, physician assistants, certified registered nurse practitioners and certified registered nurse anesthetists to one year, and voids them when the employer dismisses the practitioner. The group handles those agreements with the Health Care Regulatory Group.

  5. Decisions an employer has not made yet. Terminations; reductions in force and the notice the federal WARN Act requires before a plant closing or mass layoff, which in Pennsylvania has no separate state counterpart; leave and accommodation questions under the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act; and internal investigations of complaints against managers and executives.

How the group works

  1. The lawyer who advises on a termination defends it. Counseling and litigation are not split between teams. When a decision the group advised on becomes a charge or a lawsuit, the same lawyers carry it, with the advice already on the record.

  2. A litigation hold in the first week. When a charge or a demand letter arrives, the client receives a written hold notice and a list of the records the group needs: payroll and timekeeping data, the personnel file, and the emails the other side will ask for. On wage claims the group reconstructs hours shift by shift with the client’s payroll staff, so the exposure is a number before the first mediation.

  3. Investigations set up for what comes after. Before an internal investigation begins, the group settles who will conduct it and whether its report may later be used in the employer’s defense, because relying on the report in court can waive the privilege that protects it.

  4. Training built on the employer’s own facts. Supervisor training is written from the employer’s policies and from the kinds of complaints it has received, so managers practice on the situations they will actually meet.

A lawyer in this group

Danielle Osei

Associate

Danielle Osei is brought in when an employer has to answer a claim from someone who works for it or used to: a charge of discrimination filed with the EEOC, a demand for unpaid overtime on behalf of a whole shift, a city investigator asking for two years of posted schedules.

Read the full biography

The lawyers

  • Helen MarchettiPartner · Chair
  • Robert SzymanskiPartner
  • Alicia Torres-WhitfieldPartner
  • James OkoroCounsel
  • Danielle OseiAssociate
  • Benjamin RuizAssociate
  • Claire DonnellyAssociate
  • Samir HaddadAssociate