Attorney Jessica Caggiano Discusses Fighting for Workers’ Rights as a Labor Attorney

Willig, Williams & Davidson partner Jessica C. Caggiano recently discussed her work as a labor attorney on a podcast hosted by legal tech company Passle, a platform designed to help busy professionals create, distribute, and manage content.

As part of Passle’s CMO Series REPRESENTS podcast, Caggiano traced her upbringing in a working-class family through her career highlights fighting for fair treatment and recognition for union workers. At a young age, Caggiano became aware of the value of work and the impact of “a group of workers coming together that could really make a change and make sure that they were treated fairly, that they had fair wages,” she said. “So unions, I knew, were why my parents were able to give us the life that they gave us, working one job each instead of two or three, being able to buy a home, being able to send us to a good school.”

Caggiano discussed a key case in which she was able to help expand the number of health care employees covered by a labor agreement. “We spent a lot of time with a really wonderful group of working professionals who are dedicated to their union,” she said. “They put so much time in. They were so diligent. And it was thanks to their efforts and the collective efforts of our team that we were able to succeed.”

Caggiano also discussed her work in helping to negotiate the first-ever collective bargaining agreement for the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association. “That was a project that took 18 months and hundreds of hours of negotiating in person and on Zoom,” she said. “We were able to achieve a wonderful first collective bargaining agreement for them with not only improvements to wages in terms and conditions of employment, but some things that really were firsts among professional athletes, including paid mental health leave, and a form of free agency. It’s pretty extraordinary to have free agency at all, in any form, in a first contract.”

Listen to the full episode online: CMO Series REPRESENTS – From Roots to Rights: Lessons from a Labor Attorney