Tom Geidt

Bar Admissions

California

Tom Geidt

Partner

Tom Geidt brings many years of employment and traditional labor experience to GBG, dividing his time between advice and litigation.  He began his career prosecuting unfair labor practice cases at the National Labor Relations Board for seven years.  Since then he has assisted employers, first in a boutique employment firm, Schachter Kristoff, and then in a large international firm, Paul Hastings, before co-founding GBG (then known as Grube Brown & Geidt) with Jeff Grube and Lisa Brown.

Tom assists employers in all aspects of labor and employment litigation and counseling, with a primary focus on wage and hour law, including the defense of wage and hour class actions.  He enjoys helping employers solve complex, cutting-edge wage and hour problems.  He has provided advice to several hundred employers across the U.S. on a wide variety of issues.

Tom also has successfully defended employers in over 70 wage and hour class actions and PAGA representative actions, first-chaired multiple jury trials, argued before the federal and California appellate courts, and authored briefs to the U.S. and California Supreme Courts.  He regularly handles arbitrations and administrative proceedings before the Department of Labor, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, NLRB, EEOC, and other administrative agencies at the federal, state and local level.

Education

  • University of Wisconsin Law School, J.D., 1973, cum laude
  • Wheaton College, B.A., 1970
Key Industry Experience

Key Industries

Over the past 40 years, Tom has had the opportunity to work with employers in virtually all industries. In particular:

  • Tech: Having practiced employment law in the Bay Area since the earliest days of “Silicon Valley,” Tom has worked extensively with many dozens of tech companies from start-up to maturity
  • Healthcare providers – advice work as well as the defense of multiple wage and hour class actions
  • Banks and other financial services firms, both counseling and litigation defense
Representative Matters

Representative Litigation

  • Sutter Health Wage and Hour Cases 2014 WL 2467018 (2014): successfully opposed class certification before the trial court and court of appeal for a proposed class and subclasses of over 20,000 nurses and technicians
  • McCarther v. Pacific Telesis Group, 48 Cal.4th 104 (2010): played key role in achieving unanimous California Supreme Court ruling for our client on the validity of its sick leave policy under California’s “kin care” care
  • Pineda v. Bank of America, N.A., 50 Cal.4th 1389 (2010): heavily involved in California Supreme Court case establishing, among other things, that plaintiffs in wage and hour suits may not seek “waiting time penalties” under California’s Unfair Competition Law and thus cannot apply a four-year statute of limitations
  • Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Consent Decree (2007): discovered potential compliance issues of a complex and technical nature relating to the paystubs previously issued by the nation’s largest retailer; counseled the client on necessary modifications; self-reported the issues to the U.S. Department of Labor and California Department of Industrial Relations; and helped negotiate a favorable consent decree settlement before the DOL and DIR affecting over 1 million employees nationwide, thus avoiding litigation
Professional & Civic

Publications & Presentations

Tom has given countless presentations over the past 40 years for bar association meetings, client symposiums and other groups on the full range of labor and employment law topics, including wage and hour matters, Labor Code compliance, discrimination, sexual harassment, leaves of absence, privacy, workplace violence, unfair competition, traditional labor, new legislation, new city ordinances, and other subjects of interest to employers. He has conducted supervisory client training on sexual harassment and other topics. He also has written numerous articles, blogs, newsletters, book chapters and weekly summaries on all of these topics.

Professional Associations

  • Bar Association of San Francisco (Labor & Employment Law Section)
  • American Bar Association (Labor & Employment Law and Litigation Sections)
  • State Bar of California/California Lawyers Association (Labor & Employment Law Section)
Recognitions & Honors

Recognitions & Honors

  • Received Martindale Hubbell’s highest rating (“AV” Preeminent) for the past 30-plus years
  • Named to Northern California Super Lawyers for the past 10-plus years for Labor & Employment Law
  • Repeatedly named to The Best Lawyers of America in the category of Employment Law – Management
  • Received a special “Barbara Davis Award” from Paul Hastings in 2007 for his “generous spirit, innovation, teamwork and passionate dedication to building our Employment Law Department practice.”