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Tony Oncidi

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Anthony J. Oncidi is the Co-Chair Emeritus 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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Gramajo v. Joe’s Pizza on Sunset, Inc., 100 Cal. App. 5th 1094 (2024)

Elinton Gramajo worked as a pizza delivery driver for less than a year and sued his former employer for various Labor Code violations, including minimum and overtime wage claims.  After nearly four years of litigation and extensive discovery, a jury awarded Gramajo only $7,659.93 though his attorneys sought approximately $324,000 in prevailing…

Shah v. Skillz Inc., 101 Cal. App. 5th285 (2024)

Gautam Shah sued his former employer Skillz, Inc. for breach of contract, alleging that Skillz did not have cause to terminate his employment and wrongfully prevented him from exercising the stock options he had earned as a Skillz employee.  The company allegedly terminated Shah “for cause” because he had forwarded a confidential business report to…

Lugo v. Pixior, LLC, 101 Cal. App. 5th 511 (2024)

Saide Lugo sued her former employer Pixior and some of its employees for malicious prosecution after Pixior reported Lugo to the police for deleting “valuable computer files” after she “quit in a huff.”  Lugo was arrested and criminally prosecuted but the prosecutor dismissed the matter after it was discovered that one of Pixior’s employee’s had…

Kuigoua v. Department of Veteran Affairs, 101 Cal. App. 5th 499 (2024)

Arno Kuigoua, who worked as a registered nurse for the Department of Veteran Affairs, alleged in the complaint he filed with the EEOC and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (the “DFEH”) that he was discriminated against on the basis of his sex (male).  He also alleged retaliation for reporting the…

Mattioda v. Nelson, 98 F.4th 1164 (9th Cir. 2024)

Dr. Andrew Mattioda, a NASA scientist, sued the agency for discrimination and hostile work environment that allegedly began after he informed his supervisors of a disability to his hips and spine and requested upgraded airline tickets for work-related travel.  The district court dismissed on summary judgment both the discrimination and hostile work environment claims, but…

Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, 601 U.S. ___, 144 S. Ct. 967 (2024)

Sergeant Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow worked as a plainclothes officer in the Intelligence Division of the St. Louis Police Department until she was reassigned to a uniformed job elsewhere in the Department and replaced with a male officer.  Although Muldrow’s rank and pay remained the same, her responsibilities, perks and schedule…

The California Supreme Court handed employers a consolation prize this week, holding that an employer does not incur monetary penalties if there is a reasonable, good faith dispute over whether the employer violated the wage statement statute. Naranjo v. Spectrum Sec. Servs., Inc., 2024 WL 1979980 (Cal. May 6, 2024).

One of the employer’s workers in this case filed a putative class action, alleging…

Labor Co-Chair Tony Oncidi joins Bloomberg Law podcast host June Grasso to discuss how the First Amendment can shield casting decisions from discrimination challenges. In this episode, Grasso and Oncidi cover a Broadway musical’s casting decision that replaced one actor with another of a different race and the implications the decision will have on discrimination claims throughout the entertainment industry.

We invite you to listen…

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act (the “Act”), a bill that, if enacted, would lower the threshold for a “standard” workweek by 20 percent, from 40 to 32 hours. Should the Act become law, it would have a significant impact on employers not just in California but across the nation. (Of course, there’s always a California connection—companion legislation, H.R. 1332…