Kathryn M. Engdahl

Kathryn M. Engdahl has been working in labor and employment law since her graduation from William Mitchell College of Law in 1985. She advises and advocates for unions in all matters before federal and state courts, federal and state agencies such as the Minnesota Human Rights Department and the federal EEOC, the NLRB, and arbitrations. She represents people who have experienced employment discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Kathryn also serves as a mediator of employment disputes. She is sought out by unions, associations and businesses, to provide training in diversity and discrimination, and legal rights in labor and employment law.

After graduating with distinction from the University of Minnesota, Kathryn taught in the Minneapolis Public Schools, where she was an active member of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, Local 59. Kathryn offered her students the hands-on opportunities to learn about the labor movement. She led students in a project supporting the United Farm Workers Union lettuce boycott, which culminated in a (Minneapolis School) bus trip to Cesar Chavez’ headquarters in LaPaz, California, where she and her colleagues and students joined UFW picket lines in the fields of Coachella Valley.

After teaching, Kathryn sought to learn a trade and became a machinist. Unable to get a union job, she tried to organize a union at her first machinist job and was fired in retaliation. In her subsequent jobs in the machinist trade, she challenged wage discrimination and sexual harassment. It is on the foundation of these experiences that Kathryn decided to become a lawyer and represent workers facing such injustices as those she had encountered. Perhaps her history prompted one of her clients to dub her “Kathryn M. Engdahl, Warrior Princess at Law.”

Kathryn has carried these experiences forward, as she has followed her vision throughout her more than 25 years of practice in labor and employment law. She has never forgotten what it was like to be a worker on the receiving end of discrimination and harassment. She has never forgotten what it feels like to be terminated in retaliation for exercising her legal rights to organize. The common experience Kathryn has shared with many of her clients has instilled in her a remarkable empathy, compassion, and dedication to their interests, and has helped her to uphold their dignity.

During her law practice, Kathryn served as an administrative law judge for the Illinois State and Local Labor Relations Boards, where she conducted hearings in cases involving unfair labor practices and bargaining unit determinations, served as an election judge, and assisted the Labor Relations Boards in their deliberations. This experience gave her the opportunity to learn effective advocacy from the judge’s perspective.

Kathryn also worked for the Minnesota Education Association as a teacher rights attorney, where she handled labor arbitrations and provided legal advice and training for union staff and members.

Kathryn is dedicated to representing her clients with compassion, intelligence and integrity. She also has a deep and long-standing commitment to professional education in labor and employment law – for her clients and other attorneys. She is actively involved in planning and presenting educational seminars on labor and employment law issues.