Employment

As a recent federal appellate decision confirmed, the Americans with Disabilities Act does not require employers to always accommodate a disabled employee.  Instead, it is the employee’s burden to first show that he or she can perform the essential functions of the job with said accommodation.

Does this sound familiar: employee disregards a non-compete and joins a competitor; former company calls foul and initiates a lawsuit; parties fight it out, but by the time litigation has run its course, the non-compete period in the underlying contract has expired.  The dispute is moot, right?

The Fifth Circuit recently held that a third party witness who was fired after providing information in response to her employer’s investigation of a coworker’s harassment allegations had to demonstrate she had a “reasonable belief” that the conduct she reported violated Title VII in order to prove her retaliation claim.

The New York City Human Rights Law now prohibits discrimination based on an individual’s actual or perceived status as a caregiver.  Below, we briefly summarize the law and gauge its potential impact on the workplace.

Even though the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate is in effect and fully phased-in, it has been our experience that few employers have bothered to review their employee handbooks to reflect the ACA.  Below we discuss how employers may bolster their ACA compliance (and avoid ACA penalties) through an ACA-focused employee handbook review.

Yesterday, in an overwhelming 410-2 bipartisan vote, the US House of Representatives passed the Hatch-Coons Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), which would for the first time federalize trade secrets law and provide uniformity (and hopefully predictability) to what has, until this point, been a patchwork area of law applied disparately among the states.

It’s been over five years since the signing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act (“Dodd-Frank”) and we are still waiting for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to finalize rules on several provisions related to executive compensation.  Below is a summary of the current landscape of Dodd-Frank as it relates to key executive compensation provisions.

Earlier this month, the NLRB struck down a couple of facially-neutral workplace civility rules in an employer’s Code of Conduct.  Ho hum, business as usual.

Last Thursday, Uber settled two closely-watched class actions contesting Uber’s classification of approximately 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts as independent contractors as opposed to employees.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office Fair Labor Division has joined a multistate effort questioning retail stores’ use of “on call” shifts.

What an afternoon!  When Winston Wild’s manager called me, indicating that he was detained at Pearson International Airport, we did not know what to do, which is why I called you. Thank you for calling Winston Wild so quickly and explaining that he was only delayed and placed in Secondary Inspection.

Just last month, two federal district courts reached different conclusions, further contributing to the confusion as to whether notes taken during a Human Resources department investigation of a discrimination or harassment complaint are protected from disclosure in subsequent litigation.

The Western District of Washington recently emphasized that the obligation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) to engage in good faith interactive dialogue when seeking an accommodation that will permit an employee with a disability to perform his or her job applies to employees as well as employers.

Earlier this month Governor Cuomo signed into law New York’s Paid Family Leave Act, which, when fully implemented, will provide virtually all employees in the state up to 12 weeks of paid family leave.

My colleague Tyrone Thomas, was quoted in the Bloomberg BNA article entitled Managing Bias Risks While Increasing Workplace Diversity in which he analyzes the threat of reverse racism claims arising from employer diversity efforts.

Both the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”) and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) contain rules that aggregate trades and businesses under common control. For the most part, these rules are intended to prevent abuses that might result from breaking a venture up into separate entities.

After six years in the hopper, the Department of Labor finally issued final fiduciary regulations late last week that will greatly impact a wide variety of stakeholders. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) governs fiduciary conduct and establishes rules that bar certain transactions, referred to as “prohibited transactions.”

Many employers still grapple with the application of certain anti-discrimination laws -- such as Title VII and the ADA -- to non-U.S. citizen employees working in the United States and U.S. citizen employees working overseas.  To determine whether these laws apply, employers should ask themselves the following questions:

California and New York have each passed laws that will gradually raise their state’s minimum wage rate to $15 per hour.  This is a stunning development coming just four years after a small group of New York fast food workers initiated the call for the increase.

As promised, I am following up on my email from last week regarding some additional resources for employees working abroad.  The offer/assignment letter is a great place to specifically outline additional resources and tools the employer will provide to the employee stationed abroad, which may include the following: