Employment

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.

We reported in a recent post on proposed regulations dealing with, among other things, the treatment of hospital indemnity or other fixed indemnity insurance products in the group market.

If your company operates in a territory covered by the 4th circuit (Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina) and requires employees to sign a noncompete agreement with language similar to the following, it may be time to consider revising the agreement

On July 25, 2016, the IRS finalized regulations under Section 83 of the tax code that removes a procedural step in the process of filing an 83(b) election.

In a carefully reasoned but ultimately restrained opinion the Seventh Circuit held that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation.

Blended families may be more common than organic ones these days and perhaps the same can be said about employees in corporate America. The trend may emanate in part from the “acqui-hire” approach to building a business.

In the final weeks before the end of the legislative session, the Massachusetts House and State both addressed major pieces of labor and employment legislation. However, although the legislature passed S.2119, an Act to establish pay equity, and S.2407, an Act relative to transgender anti-discrimination, much of the legislation that business leaders had been anticipating was left unfinished as lawmakers adjourned their formal session on the night of Sunday, July 31.