JOHN STEMBER
jstember@stemberfeinstein.com

John Stember is a founding partner in Stember Feinstein Doyle & Payne, LLC.  He concentrates in employment and employee benefits work, with a special emphasis on retiree health benefits class actions, ERISA and sexual harassment.  He regularly represents executives and managers in negotiation and enforcement of employment contracts; in actions involving non-compete agreements; and in negotiating severance packages

Over the last decade, Mr. Stember has been litigating a number of large class actions involving termination or reduction of retiree healthcare benefits.  These cases have involved thousands of former union employees, including former Steelworkers, Chemical Workers, United Electrical Workers and members of PACE against such major manufacturers as American Standard, PPG, General Tire Corp.(now GenCorp.), Rexam (formerly American and National Can), Sunoco, and Crown Cork.  

Mr. Stember is currently Adjunct Clinical Professor at Duquesne University Law School and a director of its unemployment compensation clinic.  He often lectures on workplace legal issues and has co-authored a manual on Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Law.  He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including Al Franken and Oprah Winfrey, and his cases have been covered in the Wall Street Journal as well all of Pittsburgh’s major media outlets.  

Earlier in his career, Mr. Stember worked as a legal services lawyer representing low income workers in employment cases.  During this time, he served as a local union president and as National Secretary of the UAW Local 2320, the nationwide union of Legal Services Workers.  

An experienced litigator, Mr. Stember has won four appeals in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and he has received numerous favorable appellate decisions from Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court.  He brought the first same-sex sexual harassment case in federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania and has received a number of favorable decisions from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the Court of International Trade.  He is admitted to practice in the U.S.  Supreme Court, all Pennsylvania Courts, the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits as well the Federal Circuit and the Northern District of Ohio.  

Mr. Stember is the longtime Chair of the Board of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, a non-profit group dedicated to assisting dislocated workers throughout Western Pennsylvania.  He was a founding Board Member of the Steel Valley Authority, one of the first municipal authorities created to facilitate industrial retention.  He is also a member of the LCC (Lawyer’s Coordinating Committee) and NELA (National Employment Lawyers Association).  

He graduated in 1976 with a JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.  He graduated cum laude from Ohio University in 1972, where he was a Cutler Fellow and a member of Honors College.  

Mr. Stember is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and is an avid golfer, reader and traveler.  He is married with two children.  He was also one of the creators of Robot Baseball, for a time America’s premier play-by-mail fantasy baseball game.