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Employment Law

Critics—and now a lawsuit—blast DOL’s final employee/contractor rule

01/22/2024
Organizations representing business interests reacted quickly to denounce the Department of Labor’s new final rule on employee and independent contractor classification, even as the first lawsuit challenging the rule was filed.

Beware bad-mouthing effective employees after they request accommodations

01/22/2024
Always keep an eye on the optics of the employment-related actions your organization’s managers take and the decisions they make. Suddenly criticizing an employee who recently sought a disability accommodation, for example, is not just a bad look; it could also trigger a costly lawsuit.

Follow EEOC’s recipe for anti-harassment training

01/22/2024
Employers in industries such as hospitality and retail often promote rank-and-file workers to supervisory roles. That may mean that front-line supervisors may not have had the formal training required for their new jobs. That means it’s up to HR to ensure new bosses understand all their responsibilities, including how to handle discrimination and harassment they witness. A recent EEOC lawsuit offers lessons on how to deliver that training.

ADA: If employee’s preferred accommodation won’t work, you must explore alternatives

01/17/2024
Here’s a reminder to make sure you pay more than lip service to following the ADA and its requirement to reasonably accommodate disabled applicants who are qualified to perform their jobs. As one employer recently learned, it’s not enough to become known as a welcoming place for disabled workers. You must follow through whenever a disabled employee requests a reasonable accommodation.

This is how you respond to a group of employees organizing and forming a labor union

01/17/2024
How did Costco respond to a recent employee vote to unionize? Did it fire the organizers? Cut their hours? Trash-talk the union and its supporters? How about none of the above?

Accommodating Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in the workplace

01/17/2024
If you have a worker who reveals a dementia diagnosis and requests reasonable accommodations, follow your usual ADA accommodations process. Determine if the employee is disabled and discuss possible accommodations using the ADA’s interactive process.

Child-labor violations cost $3.8 million, plus lost sales of compromised ‘hot goods’

01/17/2024
One of the U.S. Department of Labor’s enforcement priorities is eliminating the illegal use of child labor. In 2023, the DOL stepped up enforcement, levying hefty fines.

NLRB takes on SpaceX in retaliation case

01/12/2024
The National Labor Relations Board continues to exercise its power to regulate workplace conduct while enforcing the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB just told SpaceX that it acted illegally when it fired eight employees for raising sexual harassment concerns. The case shows that increasingly, employees feel emboldened to speak out against what they perceive as management and CEO behavior that violates evolving workplace expectations of how business is supposed to run.

Effective March 11, new ‘independent contractor’ rule favors classifying workers as employees

01/10/2024
The Department of Labor has issued a new final rule that will make it harder for employers to classify workers as independent contractors, not employees. The rule, Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, will take effect March 11. That’s when employers must begin applying what the DOL calls an “economic realities test” to determine if someone is truly a contractor or if he or she should be classified as an employee.

A neat trick, if you can do it: Countersuing employees who bring an FLSA lawsuit to make them foot the bill

01/08/2024
This is the first case we’ve encountered where an employer sued employees for money related to its own violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.