Over the last several days, I’ve been attending the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in Chicago as a delegate from Connecticut to its main governing board (you can watch the webcast replay here, featuring a speech by Attorney General Eric Holder). The ABA accomplishes quite a bit and if you’ve been following my Twitter feed lately, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
And while the dog days of summer are clearly upon us, there are a few items to catch up on this week.
- John Phillips asks the question – can a psychogenic illness, like that experienced by 1200 Chinese workers, be covered under the ADA?
- As everyone has been focusing on the Employee Free Choice Act now pending on Congress (still nothing really new to report as of yet), the Department of Labor has issued proposed regulations on other union-related issues. Specifically, earlier this week, the DOL issued a proposal that would require federal contractors to notify employees of their rights under federal labor law. You can find the details at the Washington Employment Law Update.
- There’s been some more movement on the federal legislation regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The latest list of House member who aren’t yet committed to the bill is here, as reported by the Workplace Prof blog. Of course, in Connecticut, we already have laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
- Our webinar on social media and its implications for employers is still scheduled for Wednesday, August 12th (and has already exceeded our registration at our last webinar!). It’s not too late to sign up. In the meantime, the new Connecticut Business Litigation Blog has an interesting article up about the risks of social networking. I’ll try to put some of this into perspective next week.
- Molly DiBianca, of the excellent Delaware Employment Law Blog, has a great list of resources up on flexible work arrangements. It’s particularly useful for those concerned about preventing caregiver discrimination.
- The Prima Facie Law Blog has a great refresher (primer?) on the tax treatment of employment-related judgments and settlements. It tries to answer the common question of whether certain types of discrimination settlement can be accomplished "tax-free" (the answer is mostly "no").