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Employment Law

Price of an illegal gag order: $3.12 million

07/14/2022
Employers can’t interfere with workers’ right to engage in concerted activity aimed at improving working conditions. For example, you can’t have a handbook policy or work rule that threatens discipline for employees who talk to reporters. A recent seven-figure settlement shows how expensive having and enforcing such a rule can be.

The complete guide to state employment law 2022

07/08/2022
HR Specialist Premium Plus Subscribers can now access our free, newly updated 700+ page annual report covering employment laws for all 50 states.

Prepare to prove hardship of accommodating religion

07/07/2022
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious beliefs and practices unless doing so would create an undue burden on business operations. That means employers that reject a religious accommodation request must be prepared to demonstrate exactly how it would have created an undue hardship.

Monitoring remote workers can backfire

07/07/2022
Managers trying to electronically monitor their remote employees might want to rethink their snooping strategy. Even as online searches for “how to monitor employees working from home” have increased dramatically since the pandemic began, being Big Brother can backfire.

Supreme Court upholds USERRA protections

07/07/2022
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states and other government employers can be sued under a federal law that protects employees who are serving or have served in the military from discrimination.

NLRB expands penalties for labor violations

07/07/2022
The National Labor Relations Board has grown bolder in coming up with new penalties to slap on employers it finds guilty of committing unfair labor practices. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo recently sent out a memo summarizing the board’s new approach.

Excuse nonbelievers from prayer at work

07/05/2022
The EEOC is suing a North Carolina residential construction and renovation company for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it required employees to attend prayer sessions at work.

Learn from Google’s $118 million pay-equity lesson

06/30/2022
Many employers regularly conduct equity studies to make sure their pay policies don’t discriminate based on gender, race or other protected characteristics. It’s considered a best practice to outsource those studies in order to blunt criticism that an internal review wasn’t thorough or accurate.

New overtime rules due in October, likely raising salary threshold to $50K

06/28/2022
According to the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda, released June 21, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division plans to float a notice of proposed rulemaking concerning executive, administrative and professional exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime requirements.

Don’t cyber-spy on employees’ union discussions

06/24/2022
Federal labor law makes it unlawful for employers to “do something out of the ordinary” to observe employees’ union organizing activities. That includes surveilling employees’ online activities.