Richard Barnes is President of C. Richard Barnes and Associates, LLC. Established in 2005, this unique organizational consulting firm provides dispute resolution services, dispute resolution systems design, workforce training and development and executive coaching to a cross section of American industry, labor and service organizations. Prior to forming his own company, Barnes was the Executive Director of the Center for the Workplace at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He served in that capacity from 2002-2005. Immediately preceding that position he served as the 14th Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in January 1998, he held that position until June, 2002. Barnes is the first career mediator in FMCS history to receive this Presidential Appointment and Senate confirmation. As Director of FMCS, he was responsible for the management of our nation's Federal Mediators in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. Director Barnes received a second Presidential Appointment in 1999 when he was named to the National Partnership Council. This organization provided oversight and direction to all federal agencies involved in workplace change initiatives. His broad and far-reaching experience in labor-management relations, negotiations, organizational change processes, mediation and dispute resolution made him exceptionally qualified for these positions.

As Director and as Deputy Director, he led mediation teams that resolved some of our nation's most significant, intense and protracted labor-management disputes. In recent years, these include the 1997 strike between the 185,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters employed by the United Parcel Service, the International Association of Machinists and the Kennedy Space Center, the California Nurses Association and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the Boeing Company and their engineering employees, SPEEA. Most recently, he served on the mediation team that resolved the 2002 West Coast Ports Dispute between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union.

During his tenure as FMCS's Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Coordinator, he conducted complex multi-party regulatory negotiations including the West Tennessee Tributary Project, Native American Self-Determination Projects, and commercial ADR issues on the Panama Canal. He recently mediated an environmental dispute concerning shallow water contamination for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Air Force's Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas.

Barnes is an internationally recognized mediator, facilitator, and trainer. For the past three years he has facilitated the CURT Tripartite Initiative, an unprecedented forum of construction industry leaders from organized labor, national trade associations, and the owner community of the Construction Users Roundtable. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University's Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution in Malibu, California and a visiting professor at the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas - Little Rock, Arkansas.

Prior to his mediation career, Barnes was an International Representative with the Laborers' International Union of North America, AFL-CIO for 16 years. In this capacity, he negotiated in excess of 300 labor agreements in thirty-five separate industries.

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John is a dual qualified solicitor and barrister in the United Kingdom with over fifteen year’s litigation and advocacy experience. He holds a masters degree in International Business Law from the University of Manchester (Lawson Prizewinner), and a second LL.M. in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

Prior to relocating to the United States, John had developed a national reputation for his work in representing police labor organizations and their members in a series of high-profile investigations and public inquiries. Joining C. Richard Barnes and Associates, LLC on its creation, John has worked extensively throughout the United States, advising a varied list of private and public sector clients and trade unions in areas ranging from higher education to manufacturing and the construction industry. His particular areas of interest include negotiation planning and representation, organizational change management, and dispute resolution system design.

After completing his first LL.M., John took a two-year sabbatical from his legal career to take up a full-time law faculty appointment. He has published numerous articles on such diverse subjects as police discipline, environmental law, and human rights. In addition to his academic lecturing experience, he has also presented seminars and training courses on various legal and dispute resolution topics.

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