Labor and Sports Law Speakers Series: David Prouty, General Counsel, Major League Baseball Players Association (Wednesday, April 9)

On Wednesday, April 9th, the Labor and Employment Law Society presents a Labor and Sports Law Speaker Series event featuring David Prouty, General Counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Association.  Co-sponsored by the Sports Law Society and the National Sports Law Institute of Marquette University Law School, and led by LELS President Makda Fessahaye, Mr. Prouty's talk will begin at 12 pm in room 433. Lunch will be provided to all who attend.

David Prouty was promoted to General Counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Association in February 2013, after spending the previous five years as Chief Labor Counsel.  He is just the fourth individual in the union’s 48-year history to hold the position of General Counsel.  In his current role, Mr. Prouty oversees the MLBPA’s legal staff and he presides over all legal and collective bargaining matters between active Major Leaguers and the 30 Major League Clubs.

Prior to joining the MLBPA in 2008, he served from 2004 – 2008 as General Counsel of UNITE HERE, the union formed by the 2004 merger of UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, with HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, and as General Counsel of UNITE from 2001 – 2004.  From 1986 – 2001, Mr. Prouty was Southern Regional Counsel for UNITE and its predecessor, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, and litigated many of that union’s landmark organizing cases including Fieldcrest Cannon, S. Lichtenberg, Tultex and Kmart.  He is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member and the former Union Co-chair of the ABA’s Committee on Practice and Procedure Under the National Labor Relations Act. From 1997-1998, he was a member of the NLRB Union Advisory Panel established by then-NLRB Chairman William Gould.

Mr. Prouty, a proud graduate of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, received his AB magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1980; worked as a staffer and organizer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) from 1980 to 1983, and received his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1986. He has appeared frequently as a speaker and panelist for various groups, including the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, the Peggy Browning Fund, the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the ABA Labor and Employment Law Section. He has also served as a guest lecturer at various law schools, including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Cardozo, Stanford, Boalt (UC- Berkeley), Wake Forest, St. John’s, the University of Baltimore and the University of Tennessee. He lives in Nyack, New York with his wife, Olive Crone, and his children Conor and Molly.