Employment

Under a common strategy for controlling group health care plan costs, employers sometimes adopt arrangements under which an employee is offered cash as an incentive to waive coverage. These arrangements are colloquially referred to as “opt-out plans” or “opt-out arrangements.”

My colleague Jennifer Rubin was quoted in The San Diego Daily Transcript article entitled, “LGBT Advocates Shift Focus to Anti-Bias Law” that discussed LGBT supporters’ aim to pass a law offering greater non-discrimination protections.

Where, when, and how we work has changed profoundly since I started practicing law but employment and privacy laws have not evolved to keep up with technological change and the reality of the “everywhere” workplace.

My colleague Ray Cotton was quoted in an Inside Higher Ed article entitled, “No Golden Parachute,” which described the University of Illinois controversial decision to reject paying the $400,000 bonus to the departing chancellor Phyllis Wise.

As we reported last week, the IRS recently issued draft 2015 Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. These instructions are of interest to applicable large employers who must report their compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) rules governing employer shared responsibility.

My colleague Tyrone Thomas was quoted in a New York Times article entitled, “Union Ruling Underlines NCAA’s Evolution” addressing The National Labor Relations Board’s ruling that Northwestern football players could not unionize.

In Precia Jones v. SEPTA, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals last week joined six sister courts in finding that a suspension with pay typically does not constitute an “adverse employment action” within the meaning of Title VII and analogous Pennsylvania law.

In a mild surprise given the current constitution of the Board (read – majority appointed by President Obama), the NLRB declined to assert jurisdiction in ruling on the petition of Northwestern University’s scholarship football players to unionize.

A Seventh Circuit panel recently overruled its own precedent to hold that a defendant’s offer of full compensation in an offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 does not moot the litigation.

We are pleased to report that Employment Matters was recently ranked as the No. 1 Employment Law Blog and the No. 10 overall Legal Blog in LexBlog’s AmLaw 200 Blog Benchmark Report, which you can read here.

Over the course of a career many workers experience the displeasure of dealing with a difficult supervisor — the type of individual whose mere presence in the workplace is a source of dread and whose name inspires feelings of fear and loathing whenever it appears on a subordinate’s caller ID or the sender line of an email.

Recently, the First Circuit Court of Appeals held that former employees of a FEMA call center could not proceed in their Title VII location-based disparate impact and retaliation claims against the agency.

The IRS recently issued draft 2015 Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C (“2015 Instructions”).

Our colleague, Pam Greene, wrote an excellent post on our sister blog, Securities Matters, on the SEC's final rule requiring public companies to disclose the ratio of their CEO"s annual total compensation to that of the median annual total compensation of all company employees.

Can an employer escape a treble damage award under the Massachusetts Wage Act where it makes a late payment of final wages to a fired employee after the employee filed a wage complaint with the state Attorney General but before the employee filed a complaint with the court?  That is the question which a Massachusetts Superior Court recently answered in the affirmative.

Yes I realize that had my Corporate Divorce series progressed in a linear way, I would have started with The Courtship instead of The Break Up, but employment law metaphors are sometimes unpredictable. In my defense, I note that if you end up in divorce, you must have started with marriage, so there is a certain logic to this after all.

The New York Times reported yesterday that it received a draft executive order marked “pre-decisional and deliberative,” which contemplates granting a minimum of 56 hours of paid sick leave per year to employees of federal contractors and subcontractors.

We have frequently written about the increasing likelihood that courts will enforce arbitration agreements to resolve a broad range of issues arising out of the employment relationship.

We are pleased to report that Employment Matters was recently ranked as the No. 1 Employment Law Blog and the No. 10 overall Legal Blog in LexBlog’s AmLaw 200 Blog Benchmark Report, which you can read here.  These rankings are based on overall traffic so we absolutely could not have done this without our readers (that’s you!).

Alden Bianchi, Chair of Mintz Levin’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Practice, will provide a weekly installment on the complex reporting obligations outlined by the Affordable Care Act for health insurance carriers and employers. In this 24-week series, Alden will explain key requirements as he counts down to the January 2016 ACA reporting deadlines.