Employment

On October 21, 2016, the Departments of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Treasury (collectively, the Departments) issued a FAQ providing indefinite relief for employers who subsidize student health insurance coverage.

With Election Day just a week away(!), it’s important that employers familiarize themselves with their employees’ rights to take leave to vote.  While there is no Federal law granting employees the right to voting leave, at least half the states provide this right in some form.

Last week the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice jointly issued guidance to educate companies, and in particular human resource professionals, on how antitrust laws apply in the employment arena, particularly with respect to hiring and compensation matters.

Recently, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) published guidance on gender identity discrimination, which the Massachusetts Fair Employment Practices Act (commonly known as “Chapter 151B”) has prohibited since July 1, 2012.  The guidance and statute, however, simply codify the position MCAD has taken since 2001.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently entered the Browning-Ferris saga, filing an amicus brief in support of the new joint employer test articulated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in August 2015.

In a previous post we discussed the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, in which a three-judge panel concluded that Title VII did not protect an employee from discrimination based on her sexual orientation.

My colleague Jessica Catlow was quoted in the SHRM article, Is Banning Salary History Discussions a Game Changer? in which she analyzes a recent Massachusetts law that prohibits employers from asking job applicants about their salary history.

Beginning next year, employers may no longer force their California employees to resolve their employment-related disputes outside of California or use non-California law when doing so.  With limited exceptions, the new law, codified at Labor Code Section 925, will be applicable to all employment agreements entered into, modified, or extended on or after January 1, 2017.

As the workplace becomes increasingly digitized, both employers and employees can benefit from the conveniences technology provides.

Being connected to not just your friends, but their friends and their friends’ friends (it’s all six degrees of separation, right?) means that it’s become increasingly hard to stay anonymous when using an online dating platform.  Just ask one recent male user of OkCupid who made vulgar and inappropriate comments to a female user.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”), the influential proxy advisory firm, recently released their 2016-2017 Global Policy Survey results. These results show some interesting findings related to executive compensation and may signal the future of ISS policies concerning pay for performance and say-on-pay frequency.

California’s governor has signed into law a bill aimed at discouraging discriminatory age hiring practices in the entertainment industry. The law focuses on internet websites identifying ages, but critics question whether the law is constitutional and if it will have any real impact.

An employer’s decision to rescind an African American applicant’s job offer after she refused to comply with a race-neutral grooming policy that prohibited her from wearing her hair in dreadlocks did not constitute race discrimination in violation of Title VII, ruled the 11th Circuit.

Uber, Lyft, and their competitors, offering handy apps, responsive drivers and competitive prices, are fast becoming a favored commuter option.  Many employers either subsidize employee commuter expenses or allow employees to pay for commuter expenses through payroll deductions.

The growing prevalence of the Zika virus in the United States has already presented a number of hurdles for employers striving to create a safe and healthy workplace environment for their employees. These concerns are more immediate than ever.

Employer-sponsored group health plans and health insurance issuers (or carriers) are subject to information reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the obligation to report taxpayer identification numbers (TINs) of covered employees and their spouses and dependents.

The Ninth Circuit recently held that Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX 304) allows for a clawback of certain CEO and CFO compensation regardless of whether the clawback was triggered by the personal misconduct of such officers. District courts have reached this conclusion before, but the Ninth Circuit appears to be the first circuit to adopt such a view.

Algorithms and bots run our lives; we just may not know it. They help choose our music, buy our diapers and tell us when it’s time to change the water filter.

The Department of Labor’s new overtime rules take effect December 1, 2016, and employers across the country are carefully reviewing and modifying their compensation and payroll practices in anticipation.  As part of this preparation, employers must consider whether and how any changes to their compensation structures will affect their employee benefit plans.

In a setback to private colleges and universities, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on August 23, 2016 that student assistants have unionization and collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act.