The Major League Baseball Players Association recently announced two promotions within the legal department. Now leading the legal department as general counsel of the association, often referred to as one of strongest unions in the United States, is veteran labor lawyer Ian Penny.

Penny joined the MLBPA in 2010 as a senior labor attorney and has been involved with everything from enforcement of player rights to collective bargaining negotiations in 2011 and 2016, according to the June 30 announcement of his new role. As senior labor counsel, Penny took home over $600,000 in total compensation last year, Corporate Counsel s sibling publication The American Lawyer reported.

Before joining the MLBPA, Penny spent 10 years at the National Hockey League Players Association, which included two years as general counsel, a role he assumed after then-executive director and general counsel Ted Saskin was fired for hacking email accounts of players and union employees.

The job of executive director and GC was subsequently split into two jobs, with Penny taking on the latter. "It's kind of like having a clean sheet of ice," Penny told Corporate Counsel in a 2008 profile. Penny also served a short stint as interim executive director at the NHLPA, before resigning because he could no longer work in the present circumstances.

Penny succeeds David Prouty, who has been general counsel for the last four years. Prouty, only the union s fourth general counsel, spent nearly 10 years with the MLBPA and will continue his efforts on behalf of the players as outside counsel to the association. [T]he work of preparing for the next CBA [collective bargaining agreement] starts as soon as the ink is dry from the previous negotiation, Prouty said in the announcement of the promotions. Now is a good time for a change, both for me and for this great organization. I look forward to continuing to work on a variety of MLBPA issues."

Also promoted was Matt Nussbaum, who assumed the role of deputy general counsel, a newly created position. Nussbaum has been with the MLBPA since 2011, and has been involved in labor relations issues on behalf of players and served as lead or co-counsel in salary arbitration cases. If you look at the cases Matt has settled over the years, he has gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars for players in all kinds of cases, and especially injury cases, Prouty said of Nussbaum in a recent SportsBusiness Journal profile. Like Penny, Nussbaum previously worked at the NHLPA.

In response to a request for comment, an MLBPA representative pointed Corporate Counsel to the announcement.