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, stand 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 appli