A Message from the Chairs

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We hope that 2019 is off to a great start for all of you and we look forward to seeing you all in May at our Midwinter Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

We would like to thank all of you for participating in the Annual Section Conference in San Francisco in November 2018. It was a wonderful event—full of exciting substantive and social programs. Our Committee presented three thought provoking programs during the Conference and we enjoyed a wonderful Committee dinner with a tango performance that inspired us for the Midwinter Meeting in Argentina.  We thank all of the moderators, speakers and participants for attending the conference, and our Track Coordinators, Clare Murray, Bronwyn McKenna and Maryann Parker, for their work on planning and organizing the panels.

We are all very excited to be planning the next Committee Midwinter Meeting, which for the first time in our Committee’s history will take place in South America. We are pleased to announce that registration is open for our meeting in Buenos Aires, May 5-9, 2019 at the historic Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt.

We are putting together a lively and informative meeting that will focus on many global employment and labor law issues, discussing developments in Latin American, North America, Europe and Asia. Please visit our Committee website, which includes the meeting registration link, a draft agenda and hotel reservation information. A few of the topics that are on the agenda include:

• On opening day, we will present an in-depth review of labor and employment law in Argentina and then expand the discussion to the entire Latin American region. 
• Over the rest of the meeting, we will hear about many updates on important issues such as collective bargaining, the #MeToo movement, gig economy, immigration and employment related issues connected to Brexit. We will also continue the discussion on AI, digitization and robotics that we started lasted year.
• We will have lively discussions on new developments in responsible business conduct, employment issues connected with the increase of legalization of marijuana as well as a panel on employment related corruption and bribery issues. This year, we are also bringing back a panel on executive employment agreements and will hear about the global developments in this area.

As always, the success of our Midyear Meeting depends on your active participation. Whether you will be serving as a moderator, panelist, sharing your experiences, asking questions from the audience or just listening, our meeting cannot be successful without you. Please join us for what we expect will be a great opportunity to learn and share your thoughts and ideas with fellow labor and employment lawyers from around the world. We look forward to seeing you all soon in Argentina!

Finally, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to our editors and contributors for all of their hard work in putting together our newsletter and to Rick Bales for leading this effort.

Warm regards,

Clare Murray (International Co-Chair), Owen Herrnstadt (Union & Employee Co-chair), David Garland (Employer Co-Chair), & Katherine Blostein (Employee Co-chair).