Irv Kleiner*

Tel: 416 777 5403 Fax: 1 888 603 4593
*Legal services provided through I. Kleiner Professional Corporation

Profile

Irv is a partner in our Employment & Labour Group. His practice has been focused exclusively on management-side labour relations and employment law since his call to the Bar in 1981. He has extensive experience in representing employers in both the public and private sector. Irv has represented employers in the hospitality, manufacturing, transportation, health care (nursing homes, retirement homes, charitable and municipal homes for the aged, and hospitals), education, automotive and retail sectors.

Irv’s practice includes providing counsel and representing employers during union organizing campaigns, in union certification proceedings before the Ontario Labour Relations Board, unfair labour practice complaints, collective bargaining, rights and interest arbitrations, Human Rights complaints, Employment Standards complaints and pay equity matters. Irv is frequently appointed to sit on Boards of Arbitration as the employer-side nominee. He has been involved in the determination and resolution of numerous lead collective agreements and labour disputes both as counsel and as an employer-side nominee on boards of arbitration. Irv has been retained as the lead spokesperson in numerous collective bargaining processes throughout Ontario.

He has been actively involved in strategically advising employers in the course of preparing for collective bargaining and managing the workplace during a labour dispute when there has been a strike or lockout. Irv has represented clients before the courts in judicial review proceedings and, with respect to injunction proceedings, arbitration boards in both grievance and interest-based disputes, labour relations boards, Human Rights boards of enquiry, boards that have been constituted to determine Employment Standards complaints and Pay Equity complaints.

Irv also assists employers in drafting employment contracts, developing workplace policies and procedures, dealing with departing employee issues and litigating wrongful dismissal cases. Irv has extensive experience in advising employers on the labour and employment implications involved in complex corporate transactions, including due diligence, successor employer and related employer issues.

Irv is often retained to conduct independent workplace and fact finding investigations. 

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Memberships

  • American Bar Association - Labour Relations and Employment Section
  • Canadian Association of Counsel to Employers (CACE)
  • Canadian Bar Association
  • Ontario Bar Association
  • Ontario Bar Association - Labour and Employment Law Section Executive, 2003

Community Involvement

  • Board of Governors at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care
  • Baycrest ProAm Hockey Tournament for Alzheimers, Organizing Committee
  • Heart and Stroke Foundation, Ride for Heart

Education

  • LL.B., McGill University, 1979
  • M.A., Queen's University, 1976

Credentials

  • Called to the Ontario Bar, 1981