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Tony Oncidi

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Anthony J. Oncidi is the co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes, sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment.  According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is "brilliant at what he does… He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator, and never gives up." Other clients report:  “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as "outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a "phenomenal strategist" and "one of the top employment litigators in the country."

“Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2020), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law Journal, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management ("SHRM"), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California (Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.

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Cadena v. Customer Connexx LLC, 2024 WL 3352712 (9th Cir. July 10, 2024)

Customer Connexx LLC operates a call center for an appliance recycling business, and plaintiffs Cariene Cadena and Andrew Gonzales worked as call center agents for the company.  As part of their jobs, agents had to use an electronic timekeeping software to track when they clocked in and out.  To clock in…

Ibarra v. Chuy & Sons Labor, Inc., 102 Cal. App. 5th 874 (2024)

The trial court dismissed Edelmira Ibarra’s action under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”) on the ground that Ibarra failed to comply with PAGA’s prefiling notice requirements.  Ibarra’s notice identified four named defendants who employed Ibarra from January 2021 to July 2021 and alleged that all four defendants committed…

Chavez v. Alco Harvesting, LLC, 102 Cal. App. 5th 866 (2024)

Plaintiff Maria Chavez’s husband alleged that her husband died due to COVID-19 complications in July 2020, after contracting the disease while working for his employer, Alco Harvesting, LLC.  Per Chavez’s complaint, the company placed Chavez’s husband in “close living quarters” that precluded social distancing and “facilitated the transmission of COVID-19.”  Alco allegedly became…

Rajaram v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 105 F.4th 1179 (9th Cir. 2024)

Plaintiff Purushothaman Rajaram, a naturalized U.S. citizen, applied unsuccessfully to work for Meta Platforms, Inc. several times.  Rajaram alleged that Meta refused to hire him because it preferred to hire noncitizens holding an H-1B visa to whom Meta could pay lower wages.  Rajaram’s sole claim in this lawsuit was that Meta violated 42…

Olson v. State of Cal., 104 F.4th 66 (9th Cir. 2024) (en banc)

California’s Assembly Bill 5 (“AB 5”), which was enacted in 2018, subjects different but similar types of workers to different kinds of classification tests.  In December 2019, rideshare driver Lydia Olson, alongside Uber and Postmates, filed a complaint against the State of California attempting to enjoin the state from…

Mar v. Perkins, 102 Cal. App. 5th 201 (2024)

Winston Mar brought an action against SierraConstellation Partners, LLC and its CEO (collectively, the “Sierra defendants”), alleging that the LLC had to purchase his partnership interest within 120 days of written notice of his dissociation.  In response, the Sierra defendants filed a motion to compel arbitration, arguing that Mar was an employee bound by the…

Hernandez v. Sohnen Enterprises, Inc., 102 Cal. App. 5th 222 (2024)

In this decision, the Court of Appeal held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts California Code of Civil Procedure Section 1281.97, which requires that an employer pay (and the arbitrator receive) all arbitration fees that are owed within 30 days or face an automatic “waiver” of the right to arbitrate.  The Court…

Garcia v. Stoneledge Furniture LLC, 102 Cal. App. 5th 41 (2024)

On the first day of Isabel Garcia’s employment, she completed onboarding paperwork electronically.  When in 2021, Garcia sued her employer under the Fair Employment and Housing Act alleging a store manager sexually assaulted her, the employer moved to compel arbitration.  Garcia opposed to the motion to compel by denying that she ever actually…

Smith v. Spizzirri, 601 U.S. 472 (2024); Coinbase, Inc. v. Suski, 144 S. Ct. 1186 (2024)

In Smith, the Court held that under Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act, when a federal court determines that a dispute is subject to arbitration, and a party requests a stay of the court proceeding pending arbitration, Section 3 compels the court to issue…