Photo of Tony Oncidi

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 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.

Navarro v. Encino Motorcars, LLC, 845 F.3d 925 (9th Cir. 2017)

An amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) exempts from its overtime requirements “any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements.”  The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) subsequently issued an opinion letter and amended its Field Operations Handbook to state that service advisors also

Silva v. See’s Candy Shops, Inc., 7 Cal. App. 5th 235 (2017)

The Court of Appeal held that the trial court properly granted summary judgment to See’s Candy as to the class-certified claims for failure to properly pay wages as a result of the employer’s rounding and grace-period policies, based on expert testimony that employees were paid for all of their work under See’s

Reynaga v. Roseburg Forest Prods., 847 F.3d 678 (9th Cir. 2017)

Efrain Reynaga and his son Richard Reynaga, who worked as millwrights for Roseburg Forest Products, were the only millwrights of Mexican descent at the company. Efrain alleged that during the course of his employment he was subjected to disparate treatment and a hostile work environment based on his race or national origin. Efrain

Atkins v. City of Los Angeles, 2017 WL 588127 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017)

A jury found that the City of Los Angeles violated the rights of five recruit officers of the LAPD under the Fair Employment and Housing Act when the Department terminated or constructively discharged them after they sustained injuries during training at the Police Academy. Judgment was entered for plaintiffs after the

Bareno v. San Diego Community College Dist., 7 Cal. App. 5th 546 (2017)

Leticia Bareno, who worked as an assistant at San Diego Miramar College, was terminated after she failed to return from a medical leave of absence that she took pursuant to the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”). During the course of Bareno’s employment, she received several disciplinary warnings for, among other things, excessive

Mayes v. WinCo Holdings, Inc., 846 F.3d 1274 (9th Cir. 2017)

Katie Mayes worked at WinCo for 12 years in Idaho Falls, Idaho. During her last years at WinCo, she supervised employees on the night-shift freight crew. Mayes was fired for taking a stale cake from the store bakery to the break room to share with fellow employees and telling a loss prevention investigator that

Daniel v. Wayans, 2017 WL 526494 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017)

Pierre Daniel worked as an extra on a movie entitled “A Haunted House 2,” which Marlon Wayans wrote, produced and starred in. Daniel sued Wayans and others, alleging that during his one day of work on the movie he was compared to a “Black cartoon character” and was called “nigga.”  Wayans moved to strike

Zetwick v. County of Yolo, 2017 WL 710476 (9th Cir. 2017)

Victoria Zetwick, a county correctional officer, alleged that the county sheriff created a sexually hostile environment in violation of Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act by, among other things, greeting her and other female employees with unwelcome hugs on more than 100 occasions and a kiss at least once

California’s Fair Employment and Housing Council (“FEHC”) has finalized new regulations further limiting employers’ ability to consider criminal history when making employment decisions. The new FEHC regulations, which are scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2017, largely follow the EEOC’s 2012 Enforcement Guidance.

In addition to the new FEHC regulations and existing California law, which already limits employers’ use of criminal records when

San Jose is the third northern California city to enact a scheduling ordinance that further regulates employers’ scheduling and hiring practices.  Following on San Francisco and Emeryville’s lead, San Jose recently passed “The Opportunity to Work Ordinance” (Ordinance No. 2016.1, codified at Chapter 4.101 of the San Jose Municipal Code), which went into effect on February 6, 2017.

The primary aim of the Ordinance