Lorne Richmond

About Lorne

Lorne Richmond has spent almost 40 years representing private and public sector trade unions and their members before labour boards, arbitrators, and the courts, bringing a strategic focus to every negotiation and case. He has a particular interest in union organizing campaigns, mergers, and inter-union affairs, and represented Ontario bricklayers through a decade-long campaign to gain independence from their international union. He also pushed the Ontario government to amend the Labour Relations Act so international unions in construction must show just cause before placing a local in trusteeship or merging it with another, and he helped secure improvements to training and apprenticeship legislation. As counsel to several multi-employer pension and benefit plans in the construction industry, he has built a wide-ranging pension and benefits litigation practice, and he occasionally takes on public interest cases, including acting as co-counsel in the 2002 proceedings that halted the privatization of Hydro One. He has repeatedly been recognized as a leading construction labour relations lawyer by the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory and Best Lawyers in Canada, is a founding member of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers, and was inducted as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2017.