The Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston presented their awards for excellence in labor-management relations at the 39th annual Cushing-Gavin Awards Dinner on Friday, Dec. 2 at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. The four Boston-area labor-relations professionals who received this year’s award were:

Attorney Lawrence Holden of Lincoln. Representing the support-auxiliary professionals, Holden is a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators and a past chair of the Massachusetts Board of Conciliation & Arbitration. He graduated from Boston University Law School, and has been a full-time arbitrator for almost three decades, with clients scattered across the nation —including the National Hockey League, General Electric, and UPS. Holden gained considerable press a year ago when he served as the emergency arbitrator in the negotiation dispute between the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and The City of Boston. Kathleen Kelley of Dorchester. Kelley, the 2005 labor awardee, has been the president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, AFT, since 1993. An elementary school teacher, she became president of the Boston Teacher’s Union in 1979, and joined the State Federation as its legislative representative in 1983. Kelley also serves as an executive vice president of the Massachusetts State Council, AFL-CIO and is a long-standing member of the governor’s Education Reform Review Committee. Attorney Paul Kingston of Milton. Kingston, a member of the law firm of Rubin and Rudman, represents management counsel this year. A graduate of Georgetown Law School, he worked for several years with the National Labor Relations Board, first in Washington, D.C. and later here in Boston, before going into private practice. After a brief stint with Morgan, Brown, Kearns & Joy, he started his own law firm in 1972, and practiced there until three years ago when he joined the firm of Rubin & Rudman. Kingston is also a past president of the Carney Hospital Foundation and the Massachusetts Association of School Attorneys. Joanne Salines, MS, RN of Hanover. Salines is the director of Labor Relations for Partners HealthCare System. She worked first as a staff nurse, eventually moving into nursing administration and later transferring into full-time labor relations work at Partners in 1996. In her present position, she oversees 13 labor agreements, covering 5,400 workers in seven different locations, including Brigham & Women’s and the Faulkner Hospitals. Salines is also a member of the Massachusetts Health Care Human Resources Association and the Massachusetts Organization of Nurse Executives. The Labor Guild, founded by Cardinal Richard Cushing in 1945, is the largest such Church-sponsored member organization in the U.S. Its work in the labor-relations community includes administration of contract ratification, bargaining-unit representation and election of union officers, informal networking and counseling on professional matters, and several education programs and seminars for companies, unions and community groups.

The guild launched its annual awards dinner in 1967. It was named in honor of both Cardinal Cushing and then guild chaplain, Father Mortimer H. Gavin, SJ.