IMPACT: Conor Lamb’s Wife, Hayley Hadelman, Resigns from Jones Day Following Payday Expose

Congressman Conor Lamb (D-PA) marries controversial Jones Day attorney Hayley Haldeman

Last month, Payday Report published an expose revealing the financial conflicts of interest posed by Congressman Conor Lamb (D-PA) marrying Hayley Haldeman. Lamb, who was heavily backed organized labor in his campaigns, married Haldeman, worked as a lawyer at the notoriously anti-union law firm Jones Day, who specialized primarily in representing lead paint companies against removal liability lawsuits from local municipalities.

Now less than a month about the publication of the expose, Payday has learned that Hayley Haldeman is resigning from Jones Day and will take a job as the interim executive director of the Mattress Factory, a non-profit art gallery in Pittsburgh.

In resigning from Jones Day to work at the nonprofit, Haldeman is likely taking a considerable salary decrease from Jones Day, where lead associates with 7-8 years experience like Haldeman making on average between $300,000 and $350,000; nearly twice the salary of Congressman like Lamb, who make $174,000 a year.

When reached for comment about how much Haldeman was making at the art gallery, which will likely benefit financially from the addition of a Congressman’s wife as interim director, the Mattress Factory hung up on Payday Report.

After the publication of our expose on the financial conflict of interest presented by Lamb’s marriage to Jones Day’s Haldeman, Lamb’s camp received significant push back from local labor leader both privately and locally.

“Don’t expect anyone from labor to ever trust this S.O.B. again”, wrote on Facebook retired UE News Editor Al Hart, a former spot welder, whose home local was being targeted by the Jones Day office, where Haldeman worked.

“Unforgivable.Scabtweeted Writers’ Guild of America East Union Leader Hamilton, a labor reporter at Gizmodo, whose union Jones Day is trying to bust.

(See Columbia Journalism Review’s profile of Jones “A law firm in the trenches against media unions)

Routinely, members of Congress are asked by organized labor to lean on local employers to settle fair union contracts. However, having a wife employed at Jones Day, which represents many of the local anti-union employers, presented a clear financial conflict of interest that angered many in organized labor.

Haldeman’s resignation from Jones Day comes a week after Lamb reversed his position on $15 an hour minimum wage, a level that when he said was “too high” when he was campaigning.

As one of only 18 Democrats to vote for a resolution praising ICE, Lamb’s view on immigration have also put him at odds with many in the increasingly immigrant-driven labor movement.

Congressman Lamb’s office did not immediately return a request for comment when contacted by Payday on Saturday afternoon.

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About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. In addition to filing nearly 2,000 stories from 46 states, Elk traveled with Lula from Sáo Bernando do Campos all the way to the Oval Office in the White House. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and works frequently in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended college at PUC-Rio. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburghese fluently. His email is [email protected]

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