Donald Savelson

Don Savelson is an optional service partner in the Labor & Employment Law Department.

Don handles a wide variety of labor and employment matters including WARN, NLRA wage/hour, unemployment, ADA, FMLA, workers compensation, and occupational safety and health matters. He has represented clients in standard hearings before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and has been actively involved in litigating numerous complex OSHA cases. He has successfully defended citations issued by OSHA in numerous cases, including the precedential tuberculosis cases brought against several major hospitals in New York. Don also regularly counsels clients on a wide range of safety, health and environmental matters, including indoor air quality, mold contamination, asbestos, smoking, ergonomics, hazard communications, hazardous spills, lead, lockout-tagout, process safety, construction standards, blood-borne pathogens and communicable diseases, hazardous waste and record keeping compliance problems.

Don taught at George Washington University School of Law from 1977 to 1986 while in private practice in Washington, and has written and lectured widely for almost twenty years. He co-authored the first law book on OSHA in 1976, entitled Occupational Safety and Health Law and Practice, published by the Practising Law Institute, and is a contributor to the ABA-BNA treatise Occupational Safety and Health Law. He has been a participant and lecturer at American Industrial Hygiene Association meetings and seminars and also developed and presented the first OSHA law course for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. He has been a faculty member for the Extension Division of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations since 1993.