Employment

It’s that time of year when we look ahead at the employment and labor laws that will go in effect in the New Year. My colleagues Mike Arnold, Kate Beattie, and Brandon Willenberg have assembled this forecast of the new laws that employers and human resources professionals in California, Massachusetts, and New York may need to comply with in 2013.

The NLRB has again weighed in on workplace social media policies.  And, consistent with its recent decisions in Costco Wholesale Corp. and Karl Knauz Motors, Inc., found DISH Network’s social media policy unlawful.

With Hurricane Sandy now one week behind us (and winter storm season staring us in the face), we thought now is a good time for a refresher on the impact of a natural disaster or other emergency on federal and state wage and hour laws.

Tomorrow millions of employees around the nation will head to the polls to vote in the general election. No matter who wins, employers should make sure they are aware of the applicable voting leave and coercion laws to ensure that they don’t lose.

My colleagues, Tom Greene and Jessica Catlow, have published an alert pertaining to Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code (Section 409A), which regulates the payment of non-qualified deferred compensation (including that provided through severance agreements) and imposes penalties for non-compliance.

On October 12, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a new fact sheet titled: Application of Title VII and the ADA to Applicants or Employees Who Experience Domestic or Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, or Stalking.

Following up on our post on the subject, I had the chance to speak with Colin O'Keefe of LXBN regarding Eagle v. Edcomm, where a departing CEO had her LinkedIn account taken over by her employer. In the interview we discuss the background of the case and what employers should do in situations like this.

What a year it’s been for the National Labor Relations Board! Under the guise of preserving workers’ rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which includes the broad right “to engage in [ ] concerted activities for the purpose collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” the NLRB has.

In PhoneDog v. Kravitz, an employer and former employee battled over who owns a company-sponsored Twitter account (read about it here and here).  Now, LinkedIn joins Twitter, as an employer tries to claim title to the LinkedIn account of a former employee.

We have written here about the practice of some employers to ask applicants for their Facebook login and password information, so they can have a “look around” as part of the interview process, and about Facebook's position on such requests.

There is no denying that the NLRB has recently devoted significant attention to employee’s use of social media. Since August 2011, the Board's Acting General Counsel, Lafe Solomon, issued three reports outlining his view of how the NLRA applies to employers’ social media policies and employees’ social media postings.

Recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that awards of back pay and front pay under Title VII constitute “wages” under the Internal Revenue Code and are therefore subject to statutory withholding requirements.

In a much anticipated move, the IRS recently issued a set of important proposals aimed at helping employers identify their full-time employees for purposes the Affordable Care Act’s “employer shared responsibility” rules.  These are the 2014 rules that require employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees to offer health coverage or pay money to the government.

The Affordable Care Act’s requirements relating to first dollar coverage of preventive has hit something of a snag on the subject to coverage of contraceptive services on the part of religiously-affiliated entities such as colleges, universities and hospitals.

Last week, in a case of first impression titled Kroll v. White Lake Ambulance Authority, the Sixth Circuit found that psychological counseling may qualify as a “medical examination” under the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which forbids employers from requiring medical exams unless they are job-related.

Four years ago, New York enacted a Social Security Number Protection Law, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law, §399-dd, aimed at combating identity theft by requiring employers to better safeguard employee social security numbers in their possession. Now, New York is going one step further with its passage of two new Social Security Number Protection laws.

The National Labor Relations Board continues to expand the scope of the National Labor Relations Act in union and non-union workplaces – this time taking issue with an employer’s policy prohibiting employees from discussing ongoing internal investigations.

By this time, most employers realize that the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs all types of employment-related background checks, not just credit checks.

Almost two years ago, we wrote that the EEOC had filed its first-ever lawsuit asserting that “severe” obesity was a protectable disability under the ADA. That case, EEOC v. Resources for Human Development, Inc., provided little guidance to employers about where the EEOC would draw the line on when obesity is “severe” enough to constitute an ADA-protected disability.

New Hampshire became the latest state to enact a law pertaining to noncompete agreements.