My colleague, Tyrone P. Thomas, recently published an interesting article in a newsletter National Bar Association newsletter, the Labor and Employment Times. As beneficial as these programs may be, both to the employee and the employer, a poorly designed and managed professional leave program can create preventable legal, tax, and financial issues. Please click here to read more.
My colleague, Don Schroeder, recently published an article in the Westlaw Journal of Employment. In this article, Don examines recent National Labor Relations Board decisions and discusses NLRB trends that may affect employers and employees. Click here for more information.
According to a press release issued today, the EEOC has issued an updated Enforcement Guidance, relating to the use of arrest and conviction records in making employment decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the release, the Enforcement Guidance "updates relevant data, consolidates previous EEOC policy statements on this issue into a single document and illustrates how Title VII applies to various scenarios that an employer might encounter when considering the arrest or conviction history of a current or prospective employee."
The Enforcement Guidance and an associated Q & A document will be released and posted on the EEOC website. We will update this entry when we have had the chance to review and analyze this new development.
On April 18, 55% of Citibank’s voting shareholders refused to approve the compensation plan for Citibank’s top five executives, including its Chief Executive Officer. To read more about this recent excercise the "say-on-pay" power under the Dodd-Frank Consumer Fraud and Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”), click here for an article written by my colleagues Andrew J. Bernstein and Jessica W. Catlow.
This case tests the limits of an employer’s attendance policy. Just how essential is showing up for work on a predictable basis? In the case of a neo-natal intensive care nurse, we conclude that attendance really is essential.
So begins the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Samper v. Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.
There has been much written about the NLRB rule requiring employers- even those without unionized workforces- to a notice about union rights. Click here, here, here, here, and here for earlier blog entries. On April 17, 2012, the United States Court of Apeal for the D.C. Circuit barred enforcement of the rule, at least for now, while litigation is pending.
More to come...
My colleagues in ML Strategies just published an alert describing the status of An Act Establishing Earned Paid Sick Time (H. 3995). According to the alert, which you can read here, the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing is considering the bill, which would require companies with fewer than six employees to provide unpaid sick time, and all other employers to offer paid sick time. The bill is an amended version of the Paid Sick Days Act (H. 1398 / S. 930), and it was reported favorably by the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on March 19.
California employers, and employers with California employees, have been waiting for the California Supreme Court to decide Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, regarding the scope of an employer’s duty to provide meal periods. The significant question before the Court,(among others that the Supreme Court addressed) was whether employers were simply required to provide meal periods to non-exempt employees or, as the plaintiff employee argued, ensure that non-exempt employees do no work during the required thirty-minute meal period. The California Supreme Court concluded that under IWC Wage Order No. 5 and California Labor Code Section 512, “an employer must relieve the employee of all duty for the designated period, but need not ensure that the employee does no work.”
My colleague, Jillian M. Collins, published an alert today reminding readers that the remaining changes from the 2010 overhaul of the Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law will go into effect on May 4, 2012. We first addressed changes to the CORI law in an alert published in September 2010, when the “ban the box” provision prohibited most employers from requesting criminal history information on an initial employment application. To read the full alert, click here.
We recently wrote about the practice of some employers to ask applicants for their Facebook login and password information, so they can have a “look around” as part of the interview process. Facebook had the following to say in a blog entry posted on March 23:
In recent months, we've seen a distressing increase in repors of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people's Facebook profiles or private information. This practice dermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user's friends. It also potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.
For the full Facebook blog posting, click here.
