Louise Patry is a partner specializing in labour and employment law. She has focused her practice on developing a wide range of labour and employment law expertise on behalf of management in diverse areas of business for small, medium and large corporations, many of which operate with both white- and blue-collar workers as well as unionized personnel. She is known for her expert negotiation and arbitration skills.
Louise provides practical and expedient solutions for employee transfers and downsizing operations, wrongful dismissal cases, pay equity cases, workers' compensation and health and safety issues, pension plan issues and business consolidations, as well as the negotiation of collective agreements. Her expertise extends to constitutional and human rights issues in the fields of labour and employment law.
Louise was lead counsel for a major Montréal hotel in their last two rounds of negotiations and was instrumental in forging a collective agreement recently ratified by its employees. Of particular significance, these hotel employees are members of the Confédération des syndicates nationaux (CSN), which represents 5,500 workers in 41 hotels throughout Quebec, and although this collective agreement concerns exclusively the employees of this particular hotel, it will exert a major influence in the Quebec hospitality industry, as the CSN intends to use it as a blueprint for all its upcoming negotiations with other hotels in the province.
Louise joined the firm after practising labour and employment law for the Quebec Union of Service Employees, Local 298 (F.T.Q.).
Louise was president of the Board of Directors of the Montréal YWCA from 1996 to June 2000 and has been a director of the Montréal Women's Y Foundation since 1997 and a vice-president of its Board of Directors from 2001 to 2007. She has also been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Arts Centre Foundation since February 2002 and of the Beaconsfield Golf Club since 2005.
Louise has presented numerous conferences to a broad range of professionals on dismissals, salary equity, the financing of workplace health and safety and labour standards in Quebec, as well as on various other labour and employment issues. She has achieved one of Martindale-Hubbell’s highest rankings.
Louise received a B.C.L. from the Université de Sherbrooke in 1980 and completed a post-graduate degree in labour law in 1988 at the Université de Montréal. She joined the firm in 1986 and became a partner in 2001.
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