A few weeks ago, I highlighted a new Connecticut Supreme Court (Patino v. Birken Manufacturing) that applied “hostile work environment” claims typically found in sex harassment cases, to a sexual orientation claim. In doing so, the court made it clear that the door is
I’ve had a little more time to digest the latest memo from the NLRB opining on what is and what isn’t appropriate for employers to have in their policies. And I’ve come to a very serious conclusion:
It’s an utter mess.
(Fellow employment lawyers use the phrases “bungled mess” (Jon Hyman), “not good” (Molly DiBianca), and “Inconsistent, overreaching, it’s a hot tepid mess” (Eric Meyer) to describe the latest missive.)
For employers, make no mistake: This is the NLRB’s attempt at an all-out, crazy assault on an employer’s ability to have policies that have any teeth to them. Even the most innocuous of policies can get shot down by the NLRB as being over broad and illegal.
For example, telling employees “Don’t release confidential guest, team member or company information. . . .” is now deemed to be “illegal” because it could, in the NLRB’s view, “reasonably be interpreted as prohibiting employees from discussing and disclosing information regarding their own conditions of employment, as well as the conditions of employment of employees other than themselves–activities that are clearly protected by Section 7.”Continue Reading After NLRB’s Memo, Drafting Employment Policies Got Trickier
The NLRB today released new guidance on what is appropriate for employers to include in their social media policies. You can download the guidance here.
I’ll have more on the guidance in a post later but in my quick read of the guidance, I was struck by three things:
1) Employers that have attempted to
Back from Memorial Day weekend, there’s plenty of employment law news that I haven’t had time to write about. So here’s a brief recap of some recent items that may be of interest to employers:
Is someone bringing “Mommy Porn” (The New York Times words, not mine) into the workplace?
Yes, THAT book, 50 Shades of Grey, has been making the rounds.
And chances are, with Memorial Day weekend upon us, more than a few people will be bringing it to
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with some people from Amazon.com at their headquarters in Seattle as part of my work with the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Technology & Information Systems (let’s just call it SCOTIS for short).
Much of our conversations surrounded
The Connecticut Appellate Court released three significant employment law decisions on Monday — one of the busiest days in recent memory for the court.
For employers, the cases are a mixed bag but do provide some useful practice pointers.
City Sheriff Was Not an “Employee” Entitled to Statutory Protection
In Young v. Bridgeport, the Court
The General Assembly over the weekend passed a comprehensive bill that permits individuals to use marijuana for palliative purposes. The bill is expected to be signed by the Governor this month.
Besides just permitting individuals to use marijuana, it has several important provisions that
Back in 2010, at the same time the U.S. Department of Labor was making a big publicity push on its interpretation of rules regarding unpaid interns, the New York Times ran piece noting how employers were skirting the law when it came to internships:
The Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that
My colleague, Mick Lavelle, has this post on a topic that few know about and even fewer understand: The Fluctuating Work Week. For more background on the subject, I’ve talked about it in earlier posts here and here.
Interpretation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act is aided by hundreds of pages of