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Hugh Murray

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Employers turn to Hugh to handle their employment and labor union matters. He regularly advises clients in the manufacturing, transportation, education, utilities, energy, health care, retail and hospitality industries. His labor experience includes addressing union-related issues ranging from organizational campaigns to collective bargaining to unfair labor practice charges to strikes.

Hugh’s employment experience includes handling such claims as discrimination, unpaid wages, and breaches of contract and restrictive covenants. He counsels clients throughout the Northeast on matters ranging from sexual harassment to Family Medical Leave Act issues to OSHA matters.

Hugh is active in the Connecticut Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He is a longtime board member and current President of Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut (www.slsct.org) and founding board member and current Treasurer of Hartford Promise (www.hartfordpromise.org).

A frequent author on employment and labor topics, Hugh is the managing author of the 2016-2019 editions of the Employer’s Guide to Union Organizing Campaigns (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publishing), a comprehensive treatise on the legal framework and strategic considerations that surround management’s response to union organizing.

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Amid a flurry of executive orders starting his second administration, President Donald Trump issued an order entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” (the “Order”) on January 21, 2025. The Order will have an immediate impact on federal contractors and subcontractors currently subject to the affirmative action obligations concerning women and minorities under now-revoked Executive Order 11246 dated September 24, 1965 (and the subsequent executive orders that refined these obligations). It also signals a significant change in the focus of federal enforcement of equal opportunity laws. The Order does NOT, however, change any of the substantive federal law regarding employment discrimination. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it remains illegal for employers to make employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Other federal and state statutes prohibit making employment decisions on various other bases, including age, disability, genetic make-up, etc.; none of these substantive laws have been changed. So what has changed?Continue Reading DEI, Discrimination, Affirmative Action and More: How the Recent Executive Order Impacts Private Employers

After a series of preliminary, narrowly decided, and conflicting court decisions concerning requests for preliminary injunctions (see August 20, 2024 Alert), a federal district court in Texas has now entirely set aside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that would have invalidated tens of millions of non-compete agreements in the United States (see judge’s …

Judge R. Stan Baker of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia issued an order (Order) on December 7, 2021, enjoining the federal government “from enforcing the vaccine mandate for federal contractors and subcontractors in all covered contracts in any state or territory of the United States of America.” This comes on the heels of the November 30, 2021 order by a federal court in Kentucky (see our article here) blocking the federal government’s ability to enforce the obligation embedded in clauses in federal government contracts and other instruments requiring employees of federal contractors with covered contracts in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee to be fully vaccinated by January 18, 2022.
Continue Reading Georgia Federal Court Blocks Federal Contractor COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Nationwide