Arthur Pearlstein has an extensive background in labor and employment relations as an attorney, conflict resolution specialist, mediator, arbitrator, and law professor. With 25 years of experience as a neutral, Arthur has trained hundreds of labor arbitrators and advocates, mediated complex labor and employment disputes in a wide range of industries and institutions, and helped employers and unions develop effective and productive systems for the resolution of conflict in the workplace.

For over 10 years, Arthur headed the Office of Labor Arbitration at the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service, where he was responsible for setting standards and policies, promoting and enforcing professional responsibility, and developing advanced training programs to raise the bar in the practice of labor arbitration and mediation. Arthur will be inducted into the National Academy of Arbitrators as of May 2025.

Arthur also served FMCS as a senior mediator, working with parties to reach agreement in complex and contentious collective bargaining negotiations over everything from wages and benefits to management rights, employee discipline, jurisdictional disputes, work hours and assignments, subcontracting, and seniority, all in the context of both first contracts and renewal agreements. His experience with arbitration and mediation extends over a broad range of private and public sector fields, from health care to manufacturing, from transportation to education, and from police and fire to national defense, among many others.

In addition to traditional labor matters, Arthur has wide-ranging experience as a neutral and as an advocate in employment disputes, including discrimination, sexual harassment, ADA, and executive contracts.

In his four years as General Counsel of FMCS, Arthur served as the chief legal and ethics officer of the agency, responsible for advising on laws and ethics of dispute resolution and relevant issues in labor and employment law. He has also served as Director of the Office of Shared Neutrals, a program for mediation of EEO and other employment disputes in the federal sector.

Arthur spent seven years as Professor of Law and inaugural director of the Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at Creighton University in Omaha. He was responsible for developing curriculum, hiring faculty, teaching courses, and running workshops. During that time, he also did neutral work in labor arbitration and workplace mediation. He has published multiple articles and been a contributing author to textbooks and handbooks on dispute resolution in the workplace (see section on Publications/Presentations).

Prior to his work as a neutral, Arthur had an active law practice where at different points in his career he represented both sides in labor and employment litigation, dealing with complex contracts, major statutory disputes such as under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, multiemployer pension plans, and work stoppages.

In addition to his current work as an arbitrator and dispute resolution professional, Arthur serves as President of the Virginia Chapter of LERA (The Labor and Employment Relations Association). In 2021, Arthur was elected as a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Education

Arthur received his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, holds a master’s in dispute resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University in California, and a B.A. from Haverford College in Pennsylvania.