Unions Name Semel Labor Rep At BCB

By RICHARD STEIER

Gabrielle Semel, a veteran labor lawyer who has served as an alternate member of the city Board of Collective Bargaining for several years, has been confirmed as a regular member of the board.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow GABRIELLE SEMEL: Leaves back-up role.

She was chosen by the Municipal Labor Committee to replace Bruce Simon, a longtime labor representative on the BCB who resigned earlier this year.

Counsel to CWA

For the past 21 years, Ms. Semel has served as legal counsel to District 1 of the Communication Workers of America. She took that position after two years as an attorney in the National Labor Relations Board's Region 2 office in Manhattan, she said in a May 9 interview, because "it was the dream job for me." Before becoming an attorney, Ms. Semel had been a phone operator and was active in an unsuccessful drive by the CWA to organize employees in the title.

Ms. Semel, a graduate of the City University of New York and Wayne State Law School, is an adjunct professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

As a regular member of the seven-person BCB, which has two management and labor members apiece and three neutral appointees, her workload figures to increase significantly from the roughly three cases she had to rule on annually as an alternate. She said that she was pleased that her replacement as an alternate, Peter Pepper, was an experienced labor attorney who also had prior NLRB experience, in his case as a Field Examiner for Region 29 in Brooklyn.

Having a background interpreting Federal labor law is particularly important, Ms. Semel said, because it serves as the basis for both the city and state statutes governing labor-management relations and collective bargaining.

"I've been able to give a broader view of how issues were addressed under the National Labor Relations Act," she explained.