Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

I suppose that’s the advice parents should be giving to their kids nowadays but it holds true in employment law too.

Take this sample severance agreement that shows up as number one on Google’s search for “severance agreements”.

It’s a terrible agreement.

Yes, it’s simple but it

Imagine, hypothetically, that you are the head of a massive technology company.  You decide one day that you want to layoff, say, 50 percent of the workforce tomorrow while offering employees a severance agreement. What should you know?

My colleagues, Gabe Jiran and Keegan Drenosky, did a whole webinar on the subject last month that

Continuing my deeper dive this week into new laws from the General Assembly, today’s post tackles Public Act 21-69, which goes into effect October 1, 2021.

The law amends existing law by making it a discriminatory practice for an employer or an employer’s agent to request or require an applicant provide their:

  • age
  • date

You read the Sector Rules for reopening offices in Connecticut.

If you read page 5, you’d come across one of the guiding principles for reopening:

As we start opening select businesses…we will open at our strictest controls.  This will include…Those in high-risk groups (comorbidities) and over the age of 65 should continue to stay

Lately, I’ve been talking with more employers about permanent reductions in force.

It’s not fun.

And it’s not something I thought we’d be talking about 3 months ago, and yet it’s not foreign to me either.

In fact, I spent several of my earliest posts here on this exact topic. 

As I talk with employers

“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs”.  

Sounds like a plan for reopening businesses in Connecticut next week, right?

Well, that quote is from Bruce Willis’s character in one of my favorite movies, Die Hard. It might also be in peril if you are the same age as Bruce Willis

The EEOC has long advised that asking about date of birth on job applications was a particularly bad idea.

The ADEA does not explicitly prohibit an employer from asking an applicant’s age or date of birth. However, such inquiries may deter older workers from applying for employment or may otherwise indicate possible intent to discriminate

In my prior post, I wondered aloud whether there were some rough waters ahead for employers.  Apple recently announced that it would not meet it’s earnings estimates in the first quarter of 2019, in part because of soft demand from China. Other companies are expected to announce some similar issues.

Honestly, I’ve had enough conversations

Earlier this week, I made my long-awaited (ok, long-awaited by ME) return on WNPR’s ever-popular “Where We Live” show.

As always, I’m thankful for the invite.

My appearances date back quite some time (remember pizza and child labor in 2010?), so it was nice to be back in the studio to talk about age discrimination

So, a couple of months back, I talked about how separation agreements for small employers might not be covered by the federal law that covers such agreements.

After all, since the Age Discrimination in Employment Act only applied to employers that have 20 or more employees, the requirements for a “knowing and voluntary waiver”