MICHAEL WOLF C.V.

We can learn to prevent some destructive conflicts before they occur.  For example, conflicts of wants, needs, ideas, values, limited resources, and possible solutions.  We can learn to manage other conflicts in ways that produce constructive outcomes.  And we can learn to effectively resolve conflicts when they are neither preventable nor manageable.  But most people and organizations lack the resources to do this on their own.  That is why Michael Wolf’s expertise adds so much value when you and your organization encounter conflict that becomes a barrier to solving important problems associated with making critical decisions. 

Organizations that want to learn how to prevent and manage conflict retain Michael to coach, teach and facilitate traditional and interest-based bargaining, labor-management committees/forums, partnering initiatives, strategic planning, organizational needs assessments, and associated action planning initiatives.  Michael also develops and delivers expert training for mediators, leaders who want to improve their active listening and other communication skills, and organizational representatives who are responsible for growing or repairing constructive workplace relationships.

Organizations that need assistance resolving the most challenging conflicts retain Michael to mediate collective bargaining matters, multi-party negotiations, negotiability disputes, institutional grievances and arbitration exceptions, class action EEO complaints, high-value (including 8- and 10-figure) workplace matters, and some of the most complex, sensitive legal disputes. 

WORK HISTORY

FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY (FLRA.GOV)

From 2010 to 2018 and from 2021 to 2025, Michael served as the Director of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) Collaboration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Office (CADRO).  During most of that time, he also served as an unfair labor practice (ULP) Settlement Official for the FLRA Office of Administrative Law Judges. Michael and his team helped federal agencies and labor organizations discover constructive ways to constructively manage and resolve more than 900 complex, significant, sensitive, and controversial institutional workplace disputes. Cases most often arose as negotiability disputes over collective bargaining language, appeals of arbitration awards, impasses during term labor contract negotiations, and seemingly intractable ULP complaints. Michael added value and minimized transaction costs by helping parties settle matters in ways that improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency, improve quality of employee work life, and maintain constructive working relationships. Michael and his team also delivered facilitation, training and advisory services to help employers and unions more effectively prevent, manage, and resolve workplace conflicts, improve problem-solving relationships, and grow constructive workplace cultures. In addition, Michael and his team grew internal ADR culture at the FLRA by serving as coach, trainer, mentor, mediator, facilitator, and occasional ombuds.

The Chairman designated Michael to lead the FLRA's multi-year strategic planning process. Michael involved 40 FLRA employees in the successful developmental process. He concurrently served as the agency’s EEO Director. Michael was honored to receive the FLRA Chairman’s Certificate of Appreciation, Special Act Awards, his colleagues’ Peer Superlative Award, and annual performance awards.

PRIVATE PRACTIONER

During a brief attempt at “retirement” from federal service, Michael served as the Senior Labor Relations/EEO Consultant to the Office of Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (NDR) in the Air Force General Counsel’s Office at the Pentagon (ADR.AF.MIL).  This entailed serving as a full-time executive coach, consultant, project developer, strategic planning coordinator, and professional development instructor.  Michael served as the NDR Director’s principle internal advisor, represented the NDR Office in several matters at the Pentagon and with other elements of DoD, led development of NDR projects, served as an instructor concerning negotiation and dispute resolution matters at the Air Force Judge Advocate General's School at Maxwell AFB, AL; at the Army Judge Advocate General's School in Charlottesville, VA; and twice at Joint Base Andrews, VA.

During this time, Michael separately:

·      Mediated a large class action case pending before the EEOC;

·      Trained state hearing officers and labor mediators;

·      Served as the keynote speaker at the DoD annual ADR and Conflict Management Symposium;

·      Served as a trainer for the American Bar Association annual Dispute Resolution Conference;

·      Served as a trainer for the federal Interagency ADR Working Group;

·      Served as a trainer for an ABA Dispute Resolution Section webinar;

·      Served as a seminar leader for Washington University School of Law; and

·      Served as a trainer at the Association for Conflict Resolution annual conference.

NATIONAL MEDIATION BOARD (NMB.GOV); USERY CENTER

From 2003 to 2010, Michael was Counsel for Dispute Resolution Technology at the National Mediation Board. Michael served the Board and its staff by working at the confluence of technology, mediation and law. He provided legal guidance, helped improve the way the Board and staff use existing technology, and exercised leadership in applying new technology to the ways that the Board manages labor-management relations in the rail and airline industries. He facilitated leadership-level dispute resolution processes among rail, airline, and union representatives.

At the request of the late Secretary of Labor W.J. Usery, Michael spent the first 18 months as Associate Director of Mr. Usery’s Center for the Workplace at Georgia State University (paid for by the Center). The Center provided for the study of cooperative labor-management relations and served as a resource for leaders seeking assistance to resolve workplace disputes. Michael worked with Mr. Usery and the Center Director to develop and deliver ADR consulting, training, and dispute resolution services.

FEDERAL MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION SERVICE

From 1993 to 1999, Michael was a Commissioner and Federal Mediator at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS.gov).  Michael earned the coveted Director’s Award of Distinction, five Performance Awards, and a Service Award before becoming the FMCS Director of Mediation Technology Services and Special Assistant to the FMCS Director. Until he left FMCS in 2003, Michael’s accomplishments included:

·      Leading the team that successfully designed, developed, and implemented “TAGS,” the FMCS technology-supported dispute resolution service.

·      Training workplace leaders how to improve workplace culture, use integrative bargaining strategies, and engage in effective dispute resolution processes.

·      Helping workplace leaders engage in dramatically more successful problem solving and decision-making. 

·      Developing and delivering large scale workplace engagements, sometimes including hundreds of participants. 

·      Many special assignments, such as training Ireland’s labor mediators how to integrate leading edge technology into its mediation and training work; and helping train Panamanians to manage labor relations so the U.S. could successfully return the Panama Canal to local control.

·      Many consulting engagements, including a visiting Saudi Arabian judge to help initiate ADR procedures in the Middle East; the U.S. Air Force General Counsel’s Office as it established agency-wide ADR programs; and the Commanding General at Fort Hood (now called Fort Cavazos, the U.S. Army’s 3rd largest domestic installation). 

·      Mediated hundreds of private sector, federal sector, and other public sector labor contracts, grievances, EEO matters, unfair labor practice cases, and other workplace disputes. 

·      Founding chairperson of the Alamo Federal Executive Board Shared Neutrals Consortium. Led the team that developed, trained, and managed the mediator cadre in Central/South Texas.

CONGRESSIONAL STAFFER; NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION

Michael spent a brief time as a Congressional staffer on the House of Representatives committee responsible for federal sector labor relations matters in the immediate wake of the 1981 PATCO strike.   Michael then spent more than a decade as Assistant Counsel and then National Counsel at the National Treasury Employees Union.  While National Counsel, Michael managed the union’s Austin TX-based legal staff and its legal, political, and organizing work throughout the seven-state southwest region.  As Assistant Counsel, he represented the union and its constituents primarily in the southwest plus, during 1984-1985, in North Jersey and New York City.  Michael’s accomplishments included:

·      Supervising attorneys, organizers, and administrative staff who provided national office services for more than 23,000 bargaining unit employees.

·      Training union leaders and stewards in all aspects of their representation work and how to run locals.

·      Handling virtually every type of federal sector labor relations matter, including grievances and arbitrations, chief spokesperson in collective bargaining, duty of fair representation matters, unfair labor practice charges, unit clarification petitions, negotiability determinations, and various types of appeals to the EEOC, Merit Systems Protection Board, grievance arbitrators, FLRA ALJs, FLRA General Counsel’s Office, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTOR

Michael is an adjunct lecturer teaching a graduate course in labor-management relations at the Catholic University Metropolitan School of Professional Studies. Previously, he was adjunct faculty at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, where he co-taught law school courses at the Malibu campus concerning organized labor, collective bargaining, and dispute resolution. At the University of Baltimore, Michael designed and taught the graduate course in Online Dispute Resolution.  Michael has been a guest instructor at Harvard's Kennedy School, Cornell's ILR School, George Washington University, University of Syracuse Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, University of Texas Business School, North Texas State University Business School, Sullivan University, and Rutgers University Department of Public Policy.

LEADERSHIP ROLES

Michael has held leadership roles in professional associations and has been an adviser to dispute resolution practitioners, judges, legislators, and leaders representing unions and employers. For example (partial list of prior roles):

  • Co-Chair, Federal Sector Committee of the ABA Labor & Employment Law Section 

  • Fellow, ADR Committee of the ABA Labor & Employment Law Section 

  • Midyear Conference Planning Team, Technology Committee of the ABA Labor & Employment Law Section

  • Co-Chair, Workplace/Ombuds Section and two national committees of the Assoc. for Conflict Resolution

  • Chairperson, Technology Committee of the federal Interagency ADR Working Group Steering Committee

  • Chairperson, ADR Committee of the ABA Young Lawyers Division and Liaison to ABA Dispute Resolution Committee (pre-Section)

  • Webmaster, Assoc. of Labor Relations Agencies

  • President, Philadelphia Chapter of the Assoc. for Conflict Resolution

  • Board of Directors, Dispute Resolution Section of the New Jersey State Bar Assoc.

  • Board of Directors, New Jersey Assoc. of Professional Mediators

  • Founding Board of Directors, Texas Mediator Credentialing Assn.

  • Founding Chairperson, Alamo Federal Executive Board Shared Neutrals Consortium

  • Appointee, Supreme Court of Texas ADR Advisory Committee

  • Board of Directors, Travis County (Texas) Dispute Resolution Center

  • Chairperson, Subcommittee of the State Bar of Texas ADR Committee (pre-Section) 

EDUCATION

  • J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri

  • B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (triple major: sociology, social work, correctional administration)

  • Received and delivered thousands of hours of specialized training in mediation, communication skills, labor law, labor relations, conflict management, negotiations, organizational development, and other matters.

PUBLICATIONS

  • Wolf, "ODR and Negotiation," Chapter 14 of Online Dispute Resolution - Theory and Practice (Second Edition), Eleven International Publishing, Jun 2021.

  • Wolf, “Collaborative Technology Improves Access to Justice,” Chapter 38 of Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (Samuel Estreicher & Joy Radice eds., Cambridge University Press (ISBN: 9781107070103), Apr 2016).

  • Wolf, “Online Collaboration Tools Can Improve Workplace ADR,” Chapter 4 of Cutting Edge Advances in Resolving Workplace Disputes, at 77 (CPR International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution, 2014).

  • Wolf, “Collaborative Technology Improves Access to Justice,” 15 NYU J. of Legis & Public Policy 759 (2012).

  • Wolf, “Online Systems Improving Access to Justice,” ACResolution (Nov 2010). 

  • Wolf, “Achieve More for Your Clients with ADR,” The CPA Journal (Apr 2005)

  • Wolf et al., “Essential Collaborative Technology Tools for the 21st Century,” 2 Pepp. Disp. Resol. L.J. 321 (2002).

  • Wolf, Court-Annexed Arbitration: Working with the Judiciary (Chicago, IL: Amer. Bar Assn., 1990).

  • Wolf, Settlement Week (Chicago, IL: Amer. Bar Assn., 1990).

  • Wolf, “Involve Your Bar in ADR,” The Affiliate (Chicago IL: Amer. Bar Assn., Oct 1988).