Police Union Mourns Loss of General Counsel Michael T. Leibig
He was small in physical stature, but a giant in the law. He loomed large over every courtroom and every bargaining table where he appeared. Michael T. Leibig was General Counsel for the International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO and has earned a reputation as one of the nation's foremost experts on labor law.
On July 17, he finally succumbed to leukemia after a long and courageous struggle with the disease. Diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of the disease in the late1980's, Mr. Leibig continued to represent the International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO and thousands of law enforcement officers for more than twenty years relying on a keen intellect and strength of character while courageously holding a debilitating disease at bay. Throughout his career and despite his steadily failing health, he unflinchingly pressed case after case to ensure maximum protection for American workers, especially law enforcement officers, under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
His greatest challenge came just this past year when the U.S. Department of Labor attempted to rewrite the Fair Labor Standards Act with rule changes that would eliminate overtime pay for hundreds of thousands of American workers including law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, and other first responders. Despite the physical challenges his health presented, Mr. Leibig developed a keen, intricate, and highly detailed analysis of DOL's proposed rules changes that laid the ground work that enabled Members of Congress to garner sufficient support to protect significant portions of the law enforcement and emergency personnel community against committed opponents. His work also provided a base that brought the International Union of Police Associations, the National Association of Police Organizations, and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers under a single united banner to protect the respective members' wage base.
While other officers, such as sergeants and lieutenants, are still at risk and the battle in Congress continues, his seminal work will stand as a bedrock of protection for uncounted thousands of emergency workers. It will also serve for years to come as the base from which American workers will be able to defend themselves should some of the proposed rules changes survive and men and women are forced into court to protect their hard earned wages.
Mr. Leibig's seminal work on the FLSA proposed rule changes is the final chapter in a distinguished legal career beginning with his service in the Judge Advocates General Corps with the United States Coast Guard where he earned the Coast Achievement Award. Throughout his years as an advocate for law enforcement, a beautiful model of the Coast Guard training ship "Eagle" sat proudly in his office. A partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Zwerdling, Paul, Leibig, Kahn, Thompson & Wolley, Mr. Leibig was a 1971 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where he taught public sector labor relations, the termination of employment, labor policy, and fiduciary responsibility. His service as an educator earned him the Charles Faby Distinguished Professor Award in 1999.
In addition to numerous articles on public employee benefit and pension issues, Mr. Leibig authored four basic texts - Police Unions and the Law, Organizing Public Employees, The Fair Labor Standards Act and Policing, and Policing Your Paycheck which continues to serve as a guide for police officers on how to ensure fair compensation.
Committed to the deep belief that law enforcement officers deserved quality representation he did not rest on his laurels at the top of the labor law pyramid. Up to the very last of his career, he frequently went back into the trenches in contract negotiations for local units of the International Union of Police Associations, three state organizations as well as successfully representing individual officers who he believed would be denied due process without expert legal counsel.
Mr. Leibig represented police officers and organizations throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia as well as in such far ranging areas as California, Nevada, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Puerto Rico in efforts to improve wages, hours and working conditions on the line level in law enforcement. He included more than twenty local police unions as well as three state wide organizations on his police roster. Although expert in police labor law, Mr. Leibig's labor experience went well beyond that unique specialty. He has represented six major international unions ranging from the UAW to the NFL Players' Association.
In one celebrated case, when the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service was under great pressure to respond under oath to detailed questions regarding President Clinton's personnel actions, he effectively represented their position that to testify under oath under the circumstances at the time could result in compromising White House security and force them to violate their own sworn commitment to the Service.
No stranger to the Federal Courts, Mr. Leibig appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court three times and has argued FLSA cases in seven of the eleven United States Courts of Appeal. Given his long experience he was frequently called on to testify in numerous Congressional hearings on FLSA matters. In representing law enforcement officers and their unions in over 60 FLSA cases, he was able to get decisions that established favorable law the majority of the times he went to court.
In one such case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin he won a judgment that saw more than 1500 officers get a highly satisfactory settlement from their department when the courts ruled that they deserved overtime pay that they had not received.
In other cases he was able to establish the right of K-9 officers to extra pay for the responsibility and expense of taking care of their canine partners in their own homes. It was also largely due to his efforts that police sergeants have been given protection from overtime exemptions. That protection ensures that they will receive overtime pay and not have it denied because of their rank, decisions that are expected to have significant bearing on the current overtime struggle with the Department of Labor.
Other cases that he successfully tried resulted in major decisions that strengthened a police officer's right to due process by restricting the use of polygraphs in internal investigations, and ensuring that police officers enjoy the same constitutional rights as other citizens. Because of his tenacity in court and his expertise in labor law, thousands of law enforcement officers, many who have never met him, now enjoy better wages and benefits and greater protection of their rights today than they would have if he had not stepped forward.
As an example of his commitment and courage, Mr. Leibig continued to go to his office to develop cases, even hiring a driver when he grew too weak to drive himself. Realistic but determined, he slowly reduced his caseload and began a retirement plan to ensure a smooth transition for his successor. Reacting to the loss of a long time friend and colleague, IUPA International President Sam A. Cabral said, "While his legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of thousands of law enforcement personnel, all of us throughout the entire law enforcement community are deeply saddened and we all feel that our lives are diminished by his passing."
Michael T. Leibig was 59 years old and is survived by his wife Jan, son Chris, and daughter Kerry. At this writing, a wake has been scheduled beginning at 7 p.m. on July 22 at the Alexandria Police Association Hall in Alexandria, Virginia with the funeral to be held at the Nativity Catholic Church in Burke, Virginia the following day.
In Lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be sent to:
Doctors Without Borders
P.O. Box 1869
Merrifield, Virginia 22116
Please indicate that the gift is for Mike Leibig
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