Kenneth F. Sparks > Vedder Price > Chicago, United States > Lawyer Profile

Vedder Price
222 NORTH LASALLE STREET, SUITE 2600
CHICAGO, IL 60601-1003
ILLINOIS
United States

Work Department

Traditional Labor
Labor & Employment

Position

Shareholder

Career

Mr. Sparks is a Shareholder with over 25 years of experience in labor and employment matters.

He represents and advises private and public employers across a broad range of industries, with extensive experience working with health care organizations, in complicated labor law and litigation matters nationwide. Among his areas of concentration are union organizing and collective bargaining, including development and implementation of integrated responses to all of the litigation, publicity and strike matters that can and often do become a part of organizing and collective bargaining. He has negotiated numerous collective bargaining agreements, tried cases before the National Labor Relations Board, handled organizing and decertification campaigns and related litigation, managed injunction and other legal issues growing out of nationwide and local strikes, quelled unlawful secondary boycott campaigns and handled numerous labor-related litigation matters in state and federal courts.

Mr. Sparks also has extensive experience handling employment matters before federal and state courts and agencies, and counseling employers on how to avoid such litigation. His areas of practice include a wide variety of Title VII, ADEA, FMLA, ADA duty of fair representation and related discrimination lawsuits and noncompete agreement disputes, workplace defamation actions and wrongful-discharge matters.

Memberships

  • Member, Bar of the District of Columbia
  • Member, American Bar Association
  • Member, Trial Bar for the Northern District of Illinois

Education

  • University of Michigan Law School, J.D., 1989, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., 1986, Truman Scholar

Lawyer Rankings

United States > Labor and employment > Labor-management relations

Vedder Price offers specialist advice on substantive and procedural points of law under the National Labor Relations Act and frequently appears before the NLRB in unfair-labor-practice and representation matters. Union organizing, decertification petitions and maintaining union-free status are key focuses of the team. Elizabeth N. Hall  chairs the group, while Eugene A. Boyle  counsels and defends companies in cases spanning all aspects of labor law, and Kenneth F. Sparks  has extensive experience working with health care organizations, logistics companies, and manufacturers on labor litigation matters. Los Angeles-based Candice Zee focuses on traditional labor law matters and NLRB proceedings. All lawyers are in Chicago unless otherwise stated.