Photo of Tony Oncidi

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 JournalThe 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 JournalBloomberg 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.

A federal court in New York has held that a Broadway musical’s casting decisions—specifically replacing one actor with another actor of a different race—are shielded by the First Amendment from employment discrimination claims, in a decision that could have implications across the entertainment industry.

In Moore v. Hadestown Broadway LLC, the plaintiff, a Black woman, brought race discrimination and retaliation claims under federal and

All eyes will be on the United States this November as Americans head to the polls in the upcoming 2024 general election. Likely to go somewhat less noticed among the Presidential, Senate, and House races this year is a California ballot initiative that would repeal (after 20 long years!) the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004—better known as PAGA. (We previously reported in

California’s minimum wage is already one of the highest in the nation at $16 per hour (although Sacramento’s efforts pale in comparison to those of cities and towns across the Golden State, which have created a patchwork quilt of over 40 different minimum wage obligations up and down the state). Now, as we have previously reported here, the rate is set to increase by

As we previously reported, California recently enacted AB 1076, which reinforces the state’s broad statutory ban on noncompete agreements.  The law took effect on January 1, 2024, and expressly codifies Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP, 44 Cal. 4th 937 (2008), a California Supreme Court opinion barring any noncompete, no matter how narrowly tailored it may be.  The new law also affirms

We invite you to review our newly-posted January 2024 California Employment Law Notes, a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law. The highlights include:

Miles v. Kirkland’s Stores, 2024 WL 74698 (9th Cir. 2024)

Ariana Miles was employed by Kirkland’s, a chain of home décor stores, from February 2011 to July 2018. She sued her former employer under two theories. First, she alleged that the company unlawfully required its employees to remain in the store during their rest breaks. She also alleged that employees were forced to work

DeMarinis v. Heritage Bank of Commerce, 2023 WL 9113099 (Cal. Ct. App. 2023)

Former bank employees filed a lawsuit against their former employer for various wage-and-hour violations. The lawsuit included a Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) claim, under which plaintiffs sued on behalf of all other “aggrieved employees” of the company. In response, the bank filed an unsuccessful motion to compel plaintiffs’ “individual” claims

Dominguez v. Better Mortgage Corp., 88 F.4th 782 (9th Cir. 2023)

Underwriter Lorenzo Dominguez filed this putative class and collective action against his former employer, alleging that the company failed to pay proper overtime to him and other similarly situated underwriters. After Dominguez filed the lawsuit, his former employer allegedly attempted to persuade other underwriters at the company not to participate in the

Sanders v. County of Ventura, 87 F.4th 434 (9th Cir. 2023)

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer (Ventura County) in this putative class action arising under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), brought by county firefighters and police officers who opted out of their union- and employer-sponsored health plans. The employees who

Garrabrants v. Erhart, 2023 WL 9016436 (Cal. Ct. App. 2023)

Charles Matthew Erhart was an internal auditor for a financial institution who “blew the whistle” on the employer concerning the actions of the bank’s CEO, Gregory Garrabrants. While Erhart’s whistleblower case was pending in federal court, Garrabrants sued Erhart in state court for copying, retaining and transmitting to multiple regulatory authorities documents Erhart believed