Michael Felsen retired in July 2018, following a 39-year career with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor in Boston. Michael began his career there as a trial attorney, and for 10 years handled litigation matters involving enforcement of the federal worker protection statutes for which the Labor Department has responsibility, including OSHA, the Fair Labor Standards Act, ERISA, and several other laws. He served as ERISA Counsel for 20 years, overseeing the Department’s enforcement of that pension and health plan-related law in the six New England states. For the past 9 years, he led the Boston office, comprising 25 lawyers and 5 support staff, as Regional Solicitor. In that capacity, he was active in helping to develop new and innovative strategies for maximizing the effectiveness–given limited resources–of the Department’s worker protection enforcement efforts. Michael also served a six-month stint, several years ago, as Acting Senior Project manager in the Department’s International Labor Affairs Bureau, covering a number of DOL-funded worker protection projects in Poland and Ukraine. His interest in worker protection in the developing world remains keen, and he has begun doing consulting work in that field.
Michael received his BA magna cum laude in Social Relations from Harvard College in 1971, and his JD from Northeastern School of Law in 1978. He clerked with then Associate Justice Paul Liacos of the SJC before beginning his DOL career, has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Bar Labor and Employment Section Council and on Northeastern Law’s Alumni Board, and is a recent recipient of the Labor Guild’s Father Boyle Award for Excellence in Labor-Management Relations. Outside the lawyer context, Michael served for several years as president of Boston Workmen’s Circle, a secular Jewish cultural, educational, and social justice organization, and has been active in promoting Jewish-Muslim relations in the Greater Boston area, along with a progressive American Jewish response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As an Access to Justice Fellow, Michael will be engaging with Justice at Work (JAW), a legal nonprofit founded to support organizations of workers in low-paying jobs. JAW staff offer direct legal services to help ensure access to justice for worker center members, train workers about their legal rights and how to best assert them, and provide ongoing legal counsel to groups of workers organizing for better conditions. Michael expects to help JAW to: organize specialized legal support for immigrant workers who are at risk of or are facing immigration-related retaliation; develop a toolbox of materials to guide organizers and workers in preparing for and responding–through legal and/or organizing means–to retaliation for asserting their rights; and create and deliver a training on preparing for workplace immigration raids, including what to do if ICE comes to your workplace. Michael will do this work in collaboration with other organizations and individuals that have expertise in areas related to these issues.