Rosemary A. Townley has been a full time, independent arbitrator and mediator for over 35 years who serves the labor and employment law community and is based in the Metropolitan New York City region. She is listed on many labor arbitration and employment panels, including AAA’s Labor, Employment, Executive Contracts, and Complex Cases panels. Ms. Townley’s experience includes mediation, fact-finding and interest arbitration in the public sector, including bargaining units of police, firefighters and educators. Her experience in the private and public sector is a broad one and includes the resolution of over approximately 3000 disputes over the past 35 years. She served as one of four contract arbitrators for eight years for the NFL and the NFL Players Association, where she decided issues dealing with non-injury grievances under the collective bargaining agreement. She is a member of the CPR Distinguished Panel of Sports Neutrals and an arbitrator of its Employment Panel. She also serves on the arbitration panels of FMCS and various PERB panels. Since 2018, Ms. Townley has been listed in the Best Lawyers in America, a peer-ranked publication, which is limited to the top 5% of lawyers practicing in the field of Alternate Dispute Resolution. Since 2014, she has been listed in Super Lawyers in Metro New York and the Top Women Attorneys in Metro New York, both peer-ranked publications that identify the top 5% of lawyers practicing in the specialty in New York. Ms. Townley is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and a Former Governor of the National Academy of Arbitrator’s Board of Governors. She is also a Past Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Section on Labor and Employment and currently serves as an ex-officio member of its Executive Committee. Ms. Townley is a former adjunct professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law where she taught a course on collective bargaining and client counseling.

Her labor arbitration experience includes work in the airlines industry, telecommunications, universities, medical centers, newspapers and related dotcoms, entertainment, and matters involving cities and states. Her employment arbitration cases since 1998 have involved multiplaintiff cases to individual matters involving claims such as breach of contract, discrimination, harassment, honest services, tortious interference and other matters in sectors such as banking/investment banking/financial services, corporate entities, hedge funds, pharmaceuticals, retail, and fashion, among others.

Ms. Townley has served as speaker at many conferences in her area of specialty, presenting to professional organizations such as the ABA, NELA, the NYSBA, the FMCS, and UC Berkeley School of Law, among others. She has authored many articles or edited books on the topics of labor and employment law. Her publications include contributions to the Elkouri treatise How Arbitration Works (BNA), the Brand treatise Discipline and Discharge in the Workplace (BNA) and co-editor of the 2nd edition of the treatise Public Sector Labor and Employment Law in New York State (NYSBA).