Richard L. O’Hara

RICHARD L. O’HARA was associated with the New York City firms of White & Case and Amend & Amend before he founded this firm in 1963.  He has specialized throughout his career in labor law in the private and public sectors, and for over thirty (30) years has served as General Counsel to the New York State AFL-CIO. He also served as Counsel to the New York City Building and Construction Trades Council. From 1963 to 1975, Mr. O’Hara served as Labor Counsel to the Uniform Firefighters Association of Greater New York, Local 94, IAFF, AFL-CIO, and in 1966 he negotiated and drafted that union’s first written collective bargaining agreement. 

In the late 1960’s he created and drafted into legislation the Firefighter’s Variable Supplement Fund (“VSF”), upon which all subsequent VSF’s were modeled, and he was successful, with PBA Counsel, in forcing the City to increase the base salary of firefighters and policemen in the famed “Parity” case. Around the same time, he introduced into public employment, from his construction industry experience, the concept of Annuity Funds and negotiated the first such fund in public employment in the State of New York for the New York City Firefighters. Mr. O’Hara also has broad experience in the fringe benefit area, having represented a wide range of fringe benefit funds including Pension, Health, Annuity, and Promotion Funds and paid and prepaid legal service plans. He is a member of the American, New York State, and Nassau County Bar Associations, each of their respective Labor Law Sections, and the International Foundation of Pension and Welfare Funds. Mr. O’Hara is a graduate of Fordham University and Fordham Law School and was admitted to practice in 1958.