The noise in the employment law arena has been loud lately. Kind of like that annoying Gary Glitter song that often gets played at sports games.

But the noise is hiding the fact that, in my view, the news in the employment law is relatively minor.  There are no significant legislative or regulatory developments to speak of, the U.S. Supreme Court is in its typical summer hiatus, and the Connecticut Supreme and Appellate Courts have been fairly quiet.

What are we left with? Take a look below.

• Last week, I noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had released a report on social media cases at the NLRB. Not to be outdone, the NLRB released its own report detailing much of the same thing.  Robin Shea, at the Employment & Labor Insider, has a good recap of the lessons learned from the report.
• Bloomberg, L.P., won summary judgment last week on a very publicized, pattern & practice sex/pregnancy discrimination case brought by the EEOC.  As noted by the Workplace Prof Blog, “the EEOC had alleged that Bloomberg had a practice of discriminating against employees who took maternity leave by reducing their responsibilities and compensation, and by engaging in other actions that ostracized them or made it harder for them to succeed. Essentially, the court found that the EEOC had not presented enough evidence that discrimination against employees who went on maternity leave were systematically discriminated against.”
• The various state unions last week approved of a deal that avoids significant layoffs and helps Connecticut balance the budget.  The deal took months to craft and, after an initial vote failed, some questioned whether the labor unions were even relevant anymore.  Over at CT News Junkie, Susan Bigelow notes that this wasn’t a win for labor unions and suggests that “[o]rganized labor and state government need to find a way forward that actually strengthens both, and labor must find a way to become relevant again.”
• The Proactive Employer had news earlier this month of proposed new rules out of the OFCCP that creates a new compensation data tool. As Stephanie Thomas explains, employers need to get a better understanding of their data before sharing it with others.  “Examining compensation data with respect to gender or race/ethnicity discrimination is not an easy process. It requires a detailed understanding of how individuals within the organization are compensated and why similarly situated employees may be compensated differently.”
• If attorneys fees in FMLA cases interest you (and really, who doesn’t love this issue?), then a recent Second Circuit case provides a good primer on how courts should analyze fees in cases where the plaintiff/employee wins only a small amount.  The Wait a Second blog has all the details.

All quite interesting, just not quite that newsy or noteworthy in my view.

So, rather than leave you with more “noise”, I leave you with Florence + The Machine’s “Dog Days are Over” which seems a little more appropriate given the time of year we’re in.