Senate Bill 3, titled “Combatting Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment” has been modified since first introduced and passed the Senate late last week.  Despite the title, the bill would impact every discrimination case filed in the state and would make significant changes to the sexual harassment prevention training requirements.

It is awaiting a vote

Update: A few days after this post, the General Assembly failed to give final approval to this measure, leaving it to die at the end of the legislative session on May 9, 2018.  

Early Friday morning, the state Senate approved a bill that would significant broaden the sexual harassment prevention training requirements and many other provisions in discrimination law.  A similar (but notably different) bill passed the House; now, this Senate bill on the House calendar for this week.

It’s not a done deal just yet, but here are the key provisions of Senate Bill 132 (as amended) as it seems probable this bill is close to final passage.  Thanks to the OLR for summarizing the key aspects of the bill of which I’ve borrowed heavily from.

TRAINING

  • The bill would change the training requirements for sexual harassment prevention.
    • It would require training for supervisory employees of all employers, regardless of size
    • For nonsupervisory employees of employers with 20 or more employees, it would also require training.
    • Overall, the training would need to take place by October 1, 2019 with some additional tweaks specified in the bill.
  • The bill requires CHRO to develop and make available to employers an online training and education video or other interactive method of training and education that fulfills the bill’s training requirements.
  • Under the bill, employers who are required to provide such training must, at least every ten years, provide supplemental training to update employees on the content of the training and education.

INFORMATION AND POSTING

  • Currently, employers must post a notice that (1) that sexual harassment is illegal and (2) of the remedies available to victims. Under the bill, this information must be sent to employees by email, within three months of hire, if the (1) employer has provided an email account to the employee or (2) employee has provided the employer with an email address. The email’s subject line must include “Sexual Harassment Policy” or something similar.

Continue Reading Revised Sexual Harassment Training Bill (And So Much More) Close To Final Passage

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

Confession: Back to the Future is my favorite movie (though ask me in two months and I’ll probably say it’s actually Star Wars — employment lawyer’s prerogative).

So, how could I let “Back to the Future” day pass without an employment law-related post!

For those (strange) people who don’t know what I’m talking

secretsEarlier this month, The New York Times ran another column in its Workalogist series that asked the following question:

Are conversations with a human resources department confidential? I’m contemplating retirement in about three years and would like to gather benefit information from human resources now — but I do not want my supervisor to know.

The NLRB, right now, is union-friendly. We know it. Employers know it. Politicians know it. The unions know it.

It’s stacked 3-2 with Democrat appointees so the NLRB taking its training wheels off and is doing what it has always done. It has shifted its decisions based on the politics.

Yesterday represented just the latest in a long line of decisions where the NLRB has suddenly “seen the light” from a prior decision and overrules itself without much real logic.

It’s not right or wrong. This is just how the NLRB works. When Republicans controlled the Board, it did the same thing.

The NLRB rewrites its decisions. And creates fantastical changes with the use of a crayon (or pen, or keyboard) — just like that childhood story about Harold.

So, yesterday’s decision in Purple Communications, Inc. regarding the usage of an employer’s e-mail system should come as no surprise (and won’t be if you attended my firm’s Labor & Employment seminar in October where we talked about this case coming down just like this.)

I asked one of our labor gurus and a frequent blog contributor Jarad Lucan, to first recap what is going on.  He talked about this case at our October seminar:

Oh, 2007. Those were the days for employers.

The Sopranos made their exit. The last Harry Potter was released.

And the NLRB issues the Register Guard decision (see Dan’s post from way back then).  

The decision said that employees had no rights under labor law to use an employer’s email system, let alone to use it for statutorily protected communications, such as union organization efforts, as long as the restrictions placed on the email system by the employer were nondiscriminatory. 

According to the Board:

Nothing in the Act prohibits an employer from drawing lines on a non-Section 7 basis.   That is, an employer may draw a line between charitable solicitations and noncharitable solicitations, between solicitations of a personal nature (e.g., a car sale) and solicitations for the commercial sale of a product (e.g., Avon products), between invitations for an organization and invitations of a personal nature, between solicitations and mere talk, and between business-related use and non-business-related use.  In each of these examples, the fact that the union solicitation would fall on the prohibited side of the line does not establish that the rule discriminates along Section 7 lines.  For example, a rule that permitted charitable solicitations but not noncharitable solicitations would permit solicitations for the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, but it would prohibit solicitation for Avon and the union. 

Yesterday, a divided Board overruled Register Guard declaring that it was incorrectly decided.  

In its Purple Communications Inc. case, the Board held that “employee use of email for statutorily protected communications on nonworking time must presumptively be permitted by employers who have chosen to give employees access to their email system.” 

Put differently, if an employer has allowed its employees to use its email system for non-work related  reasons (i.e., incidental personal use), then an employer must also allow those employees to use its email system for communications protected under the Act, such as communications about union organization efforts or the scheduling of solidarity marches to protest the employer’s conduct. 


Continue Reading NLRB and the “Purple” Crayon: NLRB Rewrites Its Decision on Employer E-mail