Biography: Management Labour and Employment

Kelly is the local partner of Macleod Dixon's employment law and labour litigation department in Caracas, coordinating the litigation department of her team.

Kelly focuses on Venezuelan individual and collective employment law and transcendental labour litigation. Her practice regarding individual employment includes extensive advice on hiring of local employees and expatriates, compliance with benefit regimes, employment agreements, health, safety and social security matters, labour audits, payment of overtime, rest days and holidays, calculation of Venezuelan statutory labour benefits, reorganisation and closing of companies (layoffs), labour and tax planning, transfer of employee's abroad and bringing expatriates to work in the country, developing compensation of high level executives and negotiating their terminations, among others. She has handled major collective claims, collective conflict negotiations and collective bargaining agreement discussions. Kelly has been involved in sophisticated labour litigation before labour courts (including the Supreme Tribunal of Justice), as well as proceedings before administrative authorities on labour matters, in cases filed by individuals and groups of employees, which in many cases have become important case law.

In addition to her legal work, Kelly has been a speaker at several labour and employment conferences and is the author of numerous articles and other publications. She has also been an investigative assistant in two major projects - labour relationships in privatised Latin American companies (relaciones laborales en la empresas privatizadas en América Latina), an international project financed by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Venezuela, 1997; and neo-liberal reform, labour markets and democracy in Venezuela (reforma neoliberal, mercados laborales y democracia en Venezuela), 1997. Kelly obtained a law degree and LLM from Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. She is a member of the Labour Lawyers Association.