|
Radames (Rudy) A. Torruella joined the law firm in 1967 as a law clerk, and in 1969 became an associate attorney in the Labor and Employment Law Department. Since 1974, he has been a partner in the Department, now Practice Group. He chaired the Department for 20 years. He also has served on the firm's Practice Management, and both its Executive and Policy Committees.
Practice and Experience
Since he started practicing law, he has dedicated himself almost exclusively to the field of labor and employment law. His practice has been concentrated on discrimination and sexual harassment, litigation in local and federal courts, collective bargaining, administration and interpretation of collective bargaining agreements, arbitration, labor injunctions, immigration and both local and federal wage and hour matters. He has also handled legislative and government matters.
He has been the spokesman and legal advisor in well over 100 collective bargaining negotiations representing management in over 40 years. He has also acted as legal counsel in the administration, interpretation and application of dozens of collective bargaining agreements, including the handling of hundreds of arbitration cases and employee and union grievances. Mr. Torruella has also acted as legal advisor for management and has negotiated numerous employment termination agreements of high level executives.
He has used alternate dispute resolution vehicles to reach agreements with the opposing party. He has acted as a mediator, bringing parties to an agreement in a negotiated settlement. He has offered numerous seminars on labor and employment law subjects for the Puerto Rico Manufacturers' Association, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), for the Employers' Committee of the Department of Labor of Puerto Rico, among other organizations as well as for many clients of the firm.
Education
He did his undergraduate work at the Wharton School of Business and Finance of the University of Pennsylvania and at the Interamerican University from where he obtained a Bachelor in Arts in Economics Summa Cum Laude in 1966. He obtained a Juris Doctor from the Law School of the University of Puerto Rico in 1969.
Admissions
He is admitted to the practice of law in the Courts of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., New York State, the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the First and Eighth Circuits and the United States Supreme Court. He is certified by the Federal District Court for the District of Puerto Rico as a Mediator in the Court's Alternate Dispute Resolution Program.
Memberships
He is a member of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the Association of Labor Relations Practitioners (Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands) which he presided between 1984-86, the Federal Bar Association, the American Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He was a member of the Labor Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Labor and Human Resources of Puerto Rico from 1985 to 1988 under then Governor Rafael Hernández Colón. In 1994, then Governor Pedro Rosselló named him to the Governor's Special Advisory Counsel to Study the Feasibility of Organizing Public Employees. | 