Well, what a year 2016 has been! As the retrospectives start pouring in, we want to get ahead of the curve and look back on some of the workplace and employment law developments of 2016.
According to a recent Forbes article, innovations in the world of work this year have included Dutch desks that pull up to the ceiling at 5:30 pm, putting an exclamation point on the end of the workday, and desks in Greece that convert into beds for power naps or overnighters. We see the latter as especially rife with employment law risk. Overtime anyone? (Not to mention the potential for office romance gone awry ...
In our September 23rd post, we reported that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition for certiorari in NLRB v. Murphy Oil decided by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether arbitration clauses requiring workers to arbitrate disputes individually and not on the basis of collective or class actions (class-action waivers)are invalid under federal labor law. As we reported in September, the petition was filed in the face of a clear split among the federal Circuit Courts of Appeals. The U.S ...
The December holiday season is, in many ways, a wonderful time of year. To make sure it stays that way, here is a quick refresher for employers on how to sidestep the panoply of employment law minefields that can crop up during the holiday season.
Religious Discrimination and Accommodations
December is home to multiple religious holidays, including Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the Winter Solstice, among others. For this reason, it is important to remember that federal law and many states prohibit religious discrimination in employment and require religious accommodations ...
For those in the employment law and human resources fields, there are lots of moving targets to track this holiday season. Two of those moving targets include the temporary block placed on the U.S. Department of Labors (DOL) new federal overtime rules and a pending legal challenge to a new OSHA rule.
DOL Overtime Rule
As discussed in our post last week, a federal district court in Texas has issued a nationwide injunction blocking implementation of the new DOL overtime rules that were set to go into effect on December 1st. Yesterday, the DOL appealed the district courts ruling to the U.S ...
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