Are you ready for blockchain’s impact in employment law?

This seems to be the new equivalent to the buzz a decade ago that social media was going to change the world (it kinda did).

Perhaps bigger.

At this point in the post, there are probably two reactions: 1) Tell me more!; and 2) What are

starrMy colleague Gary Starr returns today with a story worth reading about the need for employers to secure confidential information.  Although it is based on Massachusetts, the concepts it covers may have some carryover to employers elsewhere as well.  

Employers that maintain records of their employees and customers and allow employees have access to

Real hackers are more fearsome than this one.

Okay, okay.  I realize the headline is a bit misleading.  But it isn’t every day that you hear about a data breach at Home Depot in which 56 MILLION credit cards may have been hacked. To put that into perspective, that’s 16

Numbers everywhere

Every once in a while, it’s worth taking a look at statistics in the employment law arena to get a sense of trends with the law and what employers should focus on.For those that have been paying attention, retaliation claims are now the most filed type of charge filed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee nationwide.In fiscal year 2012 (the last publicly available data), there were 99,412 charges filed (down from a peak of 99,922 in 2010).  Of those, 38.1% of charges were retaliation-based — up from just 22.6 percent in 1997.

Race discrimination claims — while up in terms of raw numbers from 15 years prior — are actually at their lowest levels percentage-wise in the last 15 years.  Instead, national origin claims and religion claims have each risen a few percentage points over the last 15 years — though even national origin claims seemed to have peaked in 2009.

Not surprisingly, in light of changes that were made to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2009, disability discrimination claims are up sharply the last few years from 14,893 claims in 2005 to 26,379 claims in 2012.

Equal Pay Act claims — which some people projected would increase dramatically after the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 — have remained fairly flat the last few years.  Up a little, but just by a few dozen.  Not enough to really move the needle on such claims.

In Connecticut, unfortunately, the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) has had issues with its computer system and hasn’t been able to update its statistics since 2010. 

(The EEOC does keep some statistics on claims are filed in Connecticut with the EEOC itself, but because those claims are typically investigated and handled through the CHRO, the EEOC statistics are really incomplete.)

But the CHRO statistics are hopefully coming soon.Continue Reading Employment Law Statistics Tell Part of a Story; Still Waiting for CHRO