Klibanow com­menced her prac­tice of ​“tra­di­tion­al” labor law, includ­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing arbi­tra­tion, in the late 1970s when Los Ange­les still had diverse local indus­tries such as ship­build­ing, steel­mak­ing and tuna pro­cess­ing and Mem­ber Fan­ning chaired the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board. At present, a good­ly por­tion of her labor arbi­tra­tion work occurs through the Fed­er­al Medi­a­tion & Con­cil­i­a­tion Ser­vice (FMCS) and in the fed­er­al sec­tor. Look­ing at ​“the big pic­ture,” it has been labor arbi­tra­tion which has informed employ­ment arbi­tra­tion to a point and, as 9^th Cir­cuit Judge Berzon has at times com­ment­ed in her opin­ions, these jurispru­den­tial­ly sep­a­rate strands have in cer­tain fed­er­al deci­sions become woe­ful­ly entan­gled result­ing in con­fu­sion of issues in both arbi­tra­tion sectors.

The his­to­ry of labor in our indi­vid­ual rights-enam­ored soci­ety con­tin­ues to be one of strug­gle, more­so than in oth­er nations. At least the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, in union-man­age­ment col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and its most fun­da­men­tal con­struct for dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, arbi­tra­tion, the play­ing fields are ​“lev­el” on both sides. Here the dis­putes gen­er­al­ly con­cern whether or not the employ­er has vio­lat­ed the terms of the par­ties’ col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment (CBA), either in the dis­ci­pline or dis­charge of an indi­vid­ual bar­gain­ing unit employ­ee, or whether the employ­er has engaged in con­duct in vio­la­tion of the CBA to the detri­ment of a cer­tain group or class of employ­ees, whose cause the union is championing.