James W. Bucking

Jim Bucking is a partner at Foley Hoag in Boston, where he has worked for the entirety of his 32-year career in the Labor & Employment group.  He chaired the practice for nearly twenty years until he became firm-wide Managing Partner in 2022.

Jim’s primary focus has been on labor relations and collective bargaining.  He represents management at the bargaining table, and litigates labor disputes in court, before arbitrators, and at the National Labor Relations Board.

Jim represents clients across diverse industries, whether they are unionized, non-union, or a mixture of the two.  He has particular expertise in the health care, energy generation, transportation, hospitality, janitorial and retail sectors.  Jim has advised unionized companies looking to acquire non-union operations, non-union companies acquiring represented workforces, and in a variety of similar strategic transactions.  He has negotiated dozens of private organizing and labor peace agreements, as well as hundreds of collective bargaining agreements. Along the way, he has assisted clients in dealing with strikes and lockouts, consumer boycotts, picketing, wildcat strikes, corporate campaigns, and other novel and creative job actions. 

Most recently, Jim has been active in the country’s energy transition, helping wind farm developers navigate the complexities of labor relations in the formation and expansion of an American clean energy workforce.  This has included negotiations and disputes with the unions representing longshoremen, seafarers and construction workers.  Jim bargained the nation’s first offshore wind project labor agreement with the Massachusetts Building Trades Council in 2021.

Jim has been active in the American Bar Association’s Labor & Employment Section, where he has worked closely with the NLRB’s General Counsel and Board members over the past two decades.  For several years he was management co-chair of the Committee on Practice and Procedure before the National Labor Relations Board.

Jim graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1991 after receiving his bachelor’s degree at Northeastern University.  He has lived in Needham with his family since 1992.