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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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On Saturday, October 14, 2017, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1008 into law, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2018.  Known as the “Ban the Box” legislation, in reference to the box applicants are asked to check if they have any prior criminal convictions, the new law prohibits employers with five or more employees from inquiring about or considering a…

A recent California Court of Appeal opinion reminds employers of the need to carefully monitor parallel workers’ compensation proceedings involving litigants who also have civil claims pending against the employer. Ly v. County of Fresno, 2017 WL 4546059 (Cal. Ct. App. Sept. 15, 2017).

Three Laotian correctional officers filed Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) charges alleging they had been subjected to racial and…

On Oct. 15, 2017, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 396 into law, expanding the scope of mandatory sexual harassment training employers must provide to their supervisory employees.  Currently, California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide at least two hours of prescribed training and education regarding sexual harassment to all supervisory employees within six months…

California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed Senate Bill 63 into law, expanding parental leave protections to those individuals who work for employers with at least 20 employees.  Under the new law, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2018, employers with at least 20 employees must allow an employee who has more than 12 months of service with the employer to take up…

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a statewide salary history inquiry law that will largely restrict employers in the state from seeking and relying upon salary history information from applicants during the hiring process.

The law, which will go into effect on January 1, 2018 and will apply to all private and public sector employers, will prohibit employers from:

  • relying on salary history

…

On Thursday, October 5th, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law nearly a dozen new immigration-related bills, including AB 450, which prohibits employers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in the absence of a judicial warrant or court order.  Among other things, the new law:

  • Prohibits employers from voluntarily consenting to an immigration enforcement agent’s entering nonpublic areas of the workplace without a warrant;

…

We invite you to review our newly-posted September 2017 California Employment Law Notes, a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law. The highlights include:

…

Okorie v. Los Angeles Unified Sch. Dist., 2017 WL 3499226 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017)

Dioka Okorie sued his employer, the Los Angeles Unified School District and others, alleging discrimination, harassment and retaliation. In response, the District filed an anti-SLAPP motion seeking dismissal of Okorie’s lawsuit on the ground that Okorie’s complaint was based on protected activity engaged in by the District as part of its…

Jones v. Royal Admin. Servs., 2017 WL 3401317 (9th Cir. 2017)

Charles Jones and Josh Watson (individuals whose cell phones are registered on the national do-no-call registry) sued Royal Administration Services for violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for calls that were made by telemarketers who were employed by All American Auto Protection (“AAAP”), which went bankrupt. The district court granted summary judgment…

Rush v. White Corp., 13 Cal. App. 5th 1086 (2017)

In this case (which does not involve employment issues), the trial court granted and the Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment in favor of defendants based upon plaintiffs’ “procedurally defective separate statement of facts.”  According to the Court, “Plaintiffs’ separate statement in response [to defendants’ separate statement of undisputed material facts] was 155 pages,…