Our Board Members and Educators

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Nina Fendel is a labor educator and attorney. She has spent the last 45 years helping non-lawyers develop the skills to become more effective advocates within the workplace and in public forums. She has developed and offered training in a wide variety of areas, including workers’ rights, welfare rights, and the rights of the elderly and disabled. She has designed and delivered training to labor unions and joint labor/management groups around the country, legal services organizations, Agricultural Labor Relations Board judges, and Tribal Court advocates, among others. Ms. Fendel is a co-author and editor of California Workers’ Rights (UC Berkeley Institute for Labor Research and Education), sings with the S.F. Rockin’ Solidarity chorus, and was on the Western Workers Labor Heritage Festival organizing committee for 30 years. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recent training sessions include “The Art of Persuasion” and “Standing Up and Stepping In: Promoting Respect in the Workplace.”  

Patricia Gates was an attorney at Weinberg, Roger and Rosenfeld in Alameda, California from 1999 to 2016. She was a pioneer in the areas of prevailing wages and public works law. Ms. Gates worked as legal counsel to the Department of Industrial Relations from 1978 to 1981 where she specialized in public works. Following that she headed a labor/management organization founded by construction unions and contractor associations, aimed at enforcing prevailing wage requirements on public construction projects. Ms. Gates was the co-author of the original Public Works Manual in 1984 and supervised its revision in 1987. She has represented labor management compliance organizations, unions and underpaid workers in cases involving wages, hours and working conditions in federal and California courts. She has also taught classes and delivered talks and keynote addresses for many unions and labor management groups across the country.  

Diane Ravnik has had a 40 year career in fair contracting, prevailing wage enforcement and promotion, and administration of registered apprenticeship programs. In 2011, she was appointed by former California Governor Jerry Brown as Chief of California’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards (DAS). She retired from that post in 2017.  Previously, she served as Administrator of the Work Preservation Fund (WPF) from 1990-2001 and as staff counsel and  Alameda County Program Coordinator for the IBEW-NECA’s Northern California Electrical Construction Industry LMCC. During that time she also served on the Board of the National Alliance for Fair Contracting. She was a contributor to the Public Works Manual (1987) and to A Practical Guide to Investigating Public Works Violations (1986). 

Phillis Payne is a principal in Connerton & Payne, PLLC, in Washington, DC. She serves as Legal Counsel to the National Alliance for Fair Contracting. Ms. Payne was elected a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 1999 and is a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee.  She publishes and lectures frequently to union and labor-management audiences on prevailing wage laws, labor standards and fair contracting legal and legislative strategies. She previously served in the Legal Department of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) and was an Adjunct Professor at the National Labor College. Ms. Payne is admitted to the District of Columbia Bar and North Carolina Bar.  She is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jolene Kramer has been an attorney at Weinberg, Roger and Rosenfeld in Alameda, California since 2012. Prior to that, Ms. Kramer represented joint labor-management Trust Funds with an emphasis in ERISA litigation. Ms. Kramer heads the law firm’s public works practice group, handling competitive bidding and fair contracting cases, public works and prevailing wage compliance cases, and labor code enforcement cases both locally and nationally. She also consults on federal wage surveys and negotiates project labor agreements on behalf of Building Trades Councils. Ms. Kramer is a frequent presenter and trainer at state and national conferences. Ms. Kramer is admitted to the California Bar and is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School.