John F. Ring

After almost 30 years practicing labor and employment law at Morgan Lewis, John was nominated to serve on the National Labor Relations Board in 2018. He served as Chairman until January 2021 and then as a Board Member until December 2022. While Chairman, John is credited with restoring balance to the enforcement of the nation’s labor laws, including on important issues to employers such as the “joint employer” doctrine, the independent contractor standard and union elections procedures. He commenced an unprecedented rule-making initiative to provide greater clarity and predictability in NLRB enforcement and oversaw a historic review of the agency’s ethics program. He also led efforts to streamline the NLRB’s case-handling procedures, reducing backlog to a historic low.

Upon his return to Morgan Lewis, John offers clients the combination of his unique perspective of serving on the NLRB as well as decades of experience as a labor and employment counselor and litigator. He advises clients on labor relations strategy, including collective bargaining and workforce restructuring.

Prior to his time on the NLRB, John served as co-chair of the firm’s labor-management relations practice. He advised clients on a full range of labor and employment issues with a focus on collective bargaining and labor-relations matters in heavily unionized industries. He counseled clients on large-scale workforce restructuring and consolidations and reduction-in-force issues. John also served as employer co-counsel to numerous multiemployer (Taft-Hartley) benefit funds in the trucking and maritime industries, among others.