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Employment Law

Never manipulate pay or hours to avoid OT

02/10/2022
Tempted to play loose with the overtime rules to save money on labor? Bad idea. You will attract the Department of Labor’s attention.

EFCA rises again in House bill, but will it survive conference?

02/08/2022
Pro-union measures that were once part of the dreaded, never-enacted Employee Free Choice Act made it into the final version of the America COMPETES Act of 2022 that passed in the House of Representatives on Feb. 4.

No, you cannot require at-will employees to stay

02/03/2022
Employment at-will means employers and employees alike are free to end the employment relationship at any time for any reason, or even no reason at all. One employer recently got lost on that two-way street.

Train bosses: No gender stereotypes at work

02/03/2022
In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that work rules based on stereotypes of how a woman should look and behave at work amounted to sex discrimination under Title VII. In 2020, the court expanded that protection to include stereotypes related to sexual orientation and transgender status.

Unionization: Avoid Amazon’s labor mistakes

02/03/2022
Employers need to get up to speed now on how to respond to the threat of union organizing. Perhaps no organization provides better lessons on how not to respond than retail giant Amazon.

Let FLSA guide policy on pay for vaccinations

02/03/2022
OSHA’s vaccinate-or-test mandate is gone, but confusion remains for employers with their own vax policies wondering whether they must pay employees for time they spend getting covid shots.

Beware liability from ‘equal opportunity harasser’

01/27/2022
Because unlawful harassment must be aimed at a person who belongs to a protected class—based on race or sex, for example—“equal opportunity harassers” may be able to target all kinds of people without creating liability for their employers. But that may be about to change, thanks to a just-filed EEOC lawsuit.

Train bosses to avoid disability bias in hiring

01/27/2022
The EEOC, which enforces many of the nation’s anti-discrimination laws, is aggressively going after employers that put roadblocks in the way of hiring disabled people. Stay ahead of the feds by ensuring hiring managers know how the law protects disabled applicants.

Union membership fell in 2021

01/27/2022
Only 10.3% of American workers belonged to a union in 2021, down from 10.8% in 2020 and matching 2019’s unionization rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics attributed the 2020 spike to pandemic-related job losses concentrated in nonunion workplaces.

NLRB to review validity of mandatory arbitration clauses

01/25/2022
The National Labor Relations Board has begun exploring whether confidentiality requirements in mandatory arbitration agreements violate Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act.