Director, Employee/Labor Relations & Leaves

Director, Employee/Labor Relations & Leaves

The Director, Employee/Labor Relations & Leaves is a key enterprise leader reporting to the Vice President of Human Resources, responsible for setting and executing the enterprise strategy for employee relations, labor relations, and leave of absence and workplace accommodation programs. Provides strategic leadership, governance, and oversight in a complex 24/7 environment to ensure consistent, compliant, and equitable workforce practices that support the Tribe's values, organizational culture, and long-term business objectives. The Director translates enterprise priorities into scalable policies, frameworks, and operating models, balancing consistency with the flexibility required for diverse business operations. Partnering closely with senior HR leadership, Legal, Operations, and executive stakeholders, this role serves as a trusted advisor on complex employee relations matters, labor strategy, collective bargaining, and regulatory risk. Anticipates emerging workforce challenges, exercises sound judgment in highly sensitive and high impact situations and proactively influences outcomes in a dynamic environment. This role is accountable for building and leading high-performing teams, establishing enterprise standards, and ensuring sustainable capabilities across employee relations, labor relations, and absence management. Drives continuous improvement through data, governance, and process optimization while ensuring a fair, compliant, and positive team member experience across the enterprise.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Designs, stands ups, and scales enterprise employee relations, labor relations, and leave and accommodation functions from inception, including operating models, service delivery structures, role clarity, governance, and decision authorities. Establishes practical, enforceable standards, frameworks, policies, and procedures that work in real operating environments and support growth, acquisitions, geographic expansion, and evolving regulatory requirements. Builds models that balance enterprise consistency with necessary business specific and regional flexibility.

2. Develops and executes a multi year, outcomes driven roadmap for employee relations, labor relations, and leaves & accommodations, clearly defining mission, scope, success metrics, and maturity targets for each discipline. Establishes enterprise governance models, escalation paths, and accountability mechanisms in partnership with HR Business Partners, Legal, and Compliance. Translates strategy into executable frameworks, investigation standards, and decision matrices that leaders can apply consistently under pressure.

3. Oversees the design, governance, and continuous enhancement of enterprise employee relations policies, investigation standards, disciplinary frameworks, due process models, and dispute resolution practices to ensure fairness, equity, consistency, and legal defensibility. Establishes and enforces clear enterprise standards for investigations and corrective action, intervening directly on sensitive, complex, or enterprise impact matters when required. Ensures investigations are conducted with rigor, impartiality, documentation discipline, and defensible outcomes.

4. Serves as the enterprise lead and chief strategist for all labor relations activities, including union engagement, collective bargaining preparation and negotiation, contract interpretation and administration, grievance handling, and dispute resolution. Personally leads or directs negotiations and labor strategy implementation for complex, high risk, sensitive, or precedent setting matters in close partnership with executive leadership and internal/external counsel. Builds and sustains senior level relationships with union leadership and function as the primary escalation point for high impact labor issues.

5. Acts as the organization's senior subject matter expert on employment and labor law compliance across federal, California, Tribal compact, and other applicable regulatory frameworks, including NLRB, EEOC, FLSA, and FMLA. Partners closely with internal and external legal counsel on employment litigation exposure, regulatory inquiries, unfair labor practice matters, and complex investigations to ensure coordinated, strategic, and defensible approaches. Proactively assesses and mitigates enterprise labor and employment risk, not merely respond after issues escalate.

6. Leads enterprise strategy, governance, and execution for leave of absence and workplace accommodation programs, ensuring full compliance with federal, state, local, and tribal requirements. Oversees the Interactive Processes and personally advises or directs resolution for complex, sensitive, or high risk cases involving accommodations, extended leaves, or return to work determinations. Ensures programs are operationally workable, legally sound, and consistently applied across the enterprise.

7. Serves as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on complex employee relations, labor relations, employment law, and workforce trends, providing clear, decisive counsel that balances legal risk, operational reality, employee experience, and business outcomes. Coaches leaders on difficult issues, policy application, and high stakes decision making, including when to escalate and when to act. Identifies emerging workforce risks, patterns, or systemic issues and drive enterprise level solutions before they become crises.

8. Establishes KPIs, dashboards, and reporting to monitor employee relations, labor relations, and leave and accommodation programs, using data to identify trends, predict risk, and improve employee and business outcomes. Drives continuous improvement through technology enablement, process optimization, and disciplined vendor performance management. Translates data insights into concrete changes to policy, practice, training, or leadership behavior.

9. Performs other duties as assigned to support the efficient operation of the department.

Supervisory Responsibilities

Carries out supervisory responsibilities in accordance with the organization's policies and applicable laws. Responsibilities include interviewing, hiring and training employees; planning, assigning reviewing and directing work; evaluating and appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems. Makes hiring decisions and designs individual development plans with succession planning in mind for all key roles.

Education, Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Human Resources, Legal Studies, Psychology, or related field is required. Juris Doctor (JD) from an accredited law school is highly desirable, particularly with a concentration in labor and employment law.
• Minimum ten (10) years of relevant and progressive experience in employee relations, labor relations, and leave and accommodation management is required, gained through a combination of Human Resources leadership and/or active practice of employment and labor law, of which at least five (5) years in role leading labor and employee relations strategy within an organization of 5,000 or more team members.
• Minimum seven (7) years of supervisory experience is required.
• Related, relevant, and/or direct experience may be considered in lieu of minimum educational requirements indicated above.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA)

• Demonstrated experience supporting or leading labor strategy, collective bargaining activities, and grievance or arbitration processes.
• Significant experience managing ADA, FEHA, FMLA, CFRA, and other applicable leave and accommodation frameworks, including oversight in the Interactive Process.
• Must be able to work flexible hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays.
• Proficient in drafting formal communications, investigation reports, disciplinary notices, and grievance responses.
• Extensive knowledge of employee relations, labor law, grievance procedures, and arbitration.
• Expertise in managing enterprise leave of absence and accommodation programs with a focus on compliance and operational effectiveness.
• Skilled in conducting impartial, confidential, and legally compliant workplace investigations.
• Effective negotiation, influence, and relationship management capabilities.
• Strong understanding of employment laws and the ability to apply them to complex workplace scenarios.
• Adept at evaluating employee issues, assessing risk, and providing practical, business-focused recommendations.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to present findings, guide leaders, and influence decisions.
• Effective in mediating disputes, resolving sensitive concerns, and promoting positive labor-management relations.
• Experienced in coaching managers to handle employee and labor relations matters consistently and confidently.
• Collaborative partner to HR, legal, and business leaders to ensure alignment and achieve strategic goals.
• Confident in offering independent, well-reasoned recommendations to senior leadership.
• Maintains high levels of discretion, professionalism, and ethical judgment in handling sensitive information.
• Adaptable and resilient in fast-paced environments, responsive to changing organizational needs.

Licenses, Certifications and Registrations

• At the discretion of the San Manuel Tribal Gaming Commission, you may be required to obtain and maintain a gaming license.
• Driving Responsibilities: Role requires regular commuting between locations. A valid driver's license and vehicle insurance with minimum liability limits is required. Role will not operate or drive Tribe-owned vehicles or patron vehicles.

Physical Requirements/ Working Conditions – Environment

The physical demands and working environment described here are representative of those that an employee encounters and must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

• Primary work environment is in a climate-controlled office setting.
• Work requires travel to attend meetings, trade shows, and conferences.
• Incumbents may be required to work evening, weekend and holiday shifts.
• Must be able to work in a fast-paced, high-demand environment.
• Strength sufficient to exert up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects and/or move up to