Employment

In addition to the California Wage Theft Protection Act, which you can read about here, and thanks to AB 22, California employers will be ringing in the new year with a new California Labor Code provision, Labor Code Section 1024.5, and an amendment to California’s Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act (CCRAA), Civil Code Section 1785.20.5.

The NLRB has postponed the implementation date for its new notice-posting rule three more months – from January 31, 2012 to April 30, 2012. The rule would require businesses to post notices apprising workers of their right to unionize.

Employers should take notice of a recent case out of the Southern District of New York, Raniere v. Citigroup, Inc., 11 Civ. 2448, 2011 WL 5881926 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2011) (Sweet, J.), in which the court concluded that a Fair Labor Standards Act collective action waiver included in an arbitration agreement is unenforceable as a matter of law.

The start of a new year often means new laws for California employers to follow, and new administrative burdens for them to bear. The start of 2012 will be no exception.

This alert serves as a reminder that the New York Wage Theft Prevention Act requires employers to provide annual pay notices to all of their employees (whether full-time or part-time, exempt or non-exempt) between January 1 and February 1, 2012.

I just read a very interesting article. titled “Furor over DSM-V.”  Apparently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association as a diagnostic tool), is in the process of being revised (for the fifth time, hence “V”). 

New York’s First Department – an intermediate appeals court – recently affirmed a New York County trial court decision holding that an arbitrator, not a court, should decide whether certain employment agreements at issue allowed for collective arbitration.

Staffing and other companies that hire nonimmigrant workers through the H-1B program must remember to pay its nonimmigrant employees the required wage rate throughout their employment, even during breaks between staffing assignments.

We previously wrote about the EEOC’s increasingly aggressive position against inflexible leave of absence policies that provide for automatic termination of employment when an employee does not or cannot return to work at the end of a specified maximum leave period, such as when the employee has exhausted available FMLA leave.

According to a press release posted on its website, the National Labor Relations Board has postponed the implementation date for its new notice-posting rule by more than two months in order to allow for enhanced education and outreach to employers, particularly those who operate small and medium sized businesses.

In a case of first impression, the United States District Court for the Second Circuit recently held that the law requires an employer to pay an employee returning from military service to a commission-based job the same total amount of pay he or she received prior to activation- the employer violates the law by returning the employee

On September 12, 2011, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”) announced its largest-ever administrative award of $846,300 (and no, that’s not a typo) against electrical supplier Acme Electric Corporation (“Acme”) for firing an employee, Mr. Charles Richard Wideman, because he had cancer.

The New York Wage Theft Prevention Act went into effect last April.  (You can read our two previous alerts about this Act here and here).  Among other things, that Act amended Section 198(1-a) of the Labor Law to require courts to impose a liquidated damages award of 100% of the total unpaid wages found to be due – up from the previous 25% cap. 

Classifying workers as independent contractors in California- already a difficult minefield to navigate for employers– is about to get a bit harder, more convoluted and, unfortunately, more expensive. Under existing California law, a worker is presumed to be an employee, rather than an independent contractor.

In a case of first impression, the Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board (ARB) finds that the meaning of the term “adverse action” under the whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is substantially broader than the meaning of the same term under Title VII

We recently alerted you that beginning on November 14, 2011, union and non-union employers alike must post unionization rights notices in their workplaces. You can access that alert here.

My colleagues Ivan Blumenthal and Robert Gault just published an Alert describing a recent decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court pertaining to a challenge to a company’s imposition of certain fees and costs on service providers it classified as franchisees/independent contractors.

My colleague, Tyrone Thomas, writes that "The Governor of New York has taken a strong and outspoken stance aimed at placing those with the largest paychecks at institutional nonprofits under a microscope.

My colleagues Richard Block and David Katz just published a new alert, describing the new NLRB rule requiring private sector employers to post notices explaining employees’ unionization rights, regardless if their workplaces are unionized or union free.

Next week, millions of children around the country will return to school, which serves as a good time to remind employers that they may have to provide short-term unpaid job-protected leave to their employees seeking to participate in their children’s school-related activities.