Mr. Wesley Kennedy, JD
Shareholder
Allison, Slutsky & Kennedy, P.C.
Founding shareholder, Allison, Slutsky & Kennedy, P.C., Chicago, Illinois. B.A., with Honors, Grinnell College, 1981; J.D., Yale Law School, 1984.
For nearly 40 years, Wes Kennedy has represented unions, benefit funds and employees – since 1995 as a founding shareholder in Allison, Slutsky & Kennedy, P.C.; and before that as an associate and partner with the firm Cotton, Watt, Jones & King. Wes has represented clients in the hospitality, transportation, graphic arts, education, construction and other industries. In addition to general advice and counseling and collective bargaining, Mr. Kennedy has represented clients in matters before various federal and state courts, and federal, state, and local administrative agencies. For a number of years, Wes has devoted much of his practice to representing unions and employees in all manner of grievance and other arbitrations involving contract interpretation and discipline/discharge issues; and in interest arbitrations including complex proceedings arising from the integration of seniority and other rights in mergers and similar transactions.
Wes is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, and a Fellow of the American Bar Association. He is a member the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law Committees on the Development of the Law Under the NLRA and on ADR. He is currently the Union and Employee Co-Chair of the ADR Committee, and Union Vice Chair of the Treatise Committee. Mr. Kennedy is also a member of the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans; and a member of the Advisory Board for the Kenneth Piper Lecture series at Chicago Kent College of Law. He is a frequent speaker at bar association and other conferences. Mr. Kennedy is the Union co-associate editor of the treatise, How Arbitration Works (2017 and subsequent Supplements). He is author of "Intermittent Strikes: An Overview From The Union Perspective," 14 The Labor Lawyer 117 (1998); is co-author of “A Touch of ‘Class’ – Immigration and the Intersection of Politics and Protected Section 7 Activity,” 23 The Labor Lawyer 99 (2007), “Twenty-Five Years of Developments in the Law Under the National Labor Relations Act,” 25 ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 299 (2010), and "Seniority Integration in the Absence of Mandatory Labor Protective Provisions," in Cleared for Takeoff: Airline Labor Relations Since Deregulation (ILR Press 1988); and has been a contributing author to publications including The Developing Labor Law (4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Editions and Annual Supplements).
