Archive for the ‘Federal Labor Law’ Category

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has released its final rule for the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) Employee Rights posting requirement. This will be published in the Federal Register on Aug. 30, 2011. This rule requires employers subject to the NLRA to post notices of employee rights under the NLRA. Subpart A of the rule [...]

A U.S. District Judge in San Francisco has set Oct. 28 as the date that former Wal-Mart class-action plaintiffs must file new lawsuits, but the order applies only to those women who previously had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and received permission to sue for gender discrimination. "We believe the [...]

In Ricci v. DeStefano, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 19 white and one Hispanic plaintiffs had been wrongly denied promotions when the New Haven, Conn., Fire Department decided to reject the results of a promotional exam as being biased and then promote African-American firefighters instead. The plaintiffs have all been promoted since the [...]

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to invite the public to provide input on the development and implementation of a compensation data collection tool. Possible uses for the collected data include generating insight into potential problems of compensation discrimination at the establishment level that might [...]

Well, yes, in certain situations, anyway. Background: In Connecticut, a famous incident involving American Medical Response, which fired an employee for her bad-mouthing comments on Facebook, led to legal action by the local office of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which in turn led to a settlement and shudders in the business world that it [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court has given the nation's second largest employer a sweeping victory by ruling that a multi-billion-dollar class action discrimination lawsuit cannot proceed because it lacks "convincing proof of a companywide discrimination pay and promotion policy." The suit against Wal-Mart was cobbled together to represent 1.5 million female and minority employees, all claiming [...]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced it will notify 1,000 companies nationwide of its intent to audit their full hiring records to determine if they're in compliance with the nation's employment eligibility verification laws. Not only will ICE be examining the companies' I-9 employment verification forms but also all payroll records, copies of immigration [...]

The Supreme Court, in overturning a federal court, has clarified discrimination claims involving the unique circumstance in which a "close family member"—in this case, a fiancé—is terminated because of actions by another family member, in this case, the fiancée. The case in question was Thompson v. North American Stainless.  Thompson was terminated after his fiancée [...]

New Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations incorporating amendments and clarifications from recent years take effect today, May 5, 2011. The new rules also concern tip pooling arrangements, which make clear that tips cannot be diverted from people receiving them unless a valid tip-pooling arrangement has been established and promulgated to participants. The regulations navigate [...]

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) extends workplace safeguards to employees' "protected concerted activity" in discussing wages, hours and working conditions, a protection that was generally thought to be confined to union organizing. Thus if a worker were fired for discussing a union issue with other employees, that could be considered a [...]