Twas the day before the night before Christmas
And all thru the law office
Not a creature was stirring
Except the employment lawyers reading the new Congressional Omnibus spending bill and looking for the employment law provisions tucked neatly inside.
In a parting gift for employers and employees, Congress passed a broad spending bill on
Employment law lawyers are asked to review a lot of employment decisions.
If we’re lucky, we’re brought in early in the process when the decision isn’t yet final and where our input can be useful.
Other times though, we’re asked to opine on decisions after the fact.
And truth is, it’s really pretty easy to
Years ago, I recall having a friendly conversation with another attorney in Connecticut where the topic turned to the notion of “At Will” employment.
When we couldn’t settle on an answer, we moved on to talking about whether the Hartford Whalers would ever come back.
I think we had a better answer for that question:
The Connecticut General Assembly is back in session and with significant budget deficits looming, it’s not going to be an easy year for legislators.
From a labor and employment law session, once again it will be interesting to see what will be seriously considered.
A Bloomberg Law article late last week suggested that Democrats in
Well, it was bound to happen. After nine years of writing the blog on a near daily schedule, some work and personal commitments interfered with my blog writing schedule. But never fear, more new posts from me are now right around the corner.
In the meantime, one of our summer associates, James Joyce, joins the
No one will ever mistake the Connecticut Legal Conference, run by the Connecticut Bar Association, for, say a glitzy gaming conference. But if you were fortunate to attend, you had the opportunity to hear some pretty good speakers talk about employment law for several hours.
Among
As I said before, the notion that this might be a quiet year for employment law legislation at the Connecticut General Assembly has long since left the train station.
Indeed, we’ve appear to be swinging completely in the opposite direction. Anything and everything appears up discussion and possible passage this year — including items that really stood no chance in prior years.
I’ll leave it for the political pundits to analyze the why and the politics of it all. But for employers, some of these proposals are going to be very challenging, at best, if passed.
One such bill, which appeared this week on the “GO” list (meaning its ready for considering by both houses) is House Bill 6850, titled “An Act on Pay Equity and Fairness”. Of course, you won’t find those words in the bill itself which is odd. There is nothing about pay equity in the bill; indeed, it is much much broader than that.
It stands in contrast to, say, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which tried to tackle gender discrimination in pay directly.
This bill would make it illegal for employers to do three things. If passed, no employer (no matter how big or small) could:
You might be wondering: Isn’t this first bill duplicative of federal law? And the answer is yes, and then it goes beyond it. Federal labor law (the National Labor Relations Act) already protects two or more employees discussing improving their pay as a “protected concerted activity”. It’s been on the books for nearly 80 years. So, as noted in an NPR article:
Under a nearly 80-year-old federal labor law, employees already can talk about their salaries at work, and employers are generally prohibited from imposing “pay secrecy” policies, whether or not they do business with the federal government.
This provision goes beyond that by making it improper for an employer to prohibit an employee from even disclosing another employee’s pay.Continue Reading “Pay Secrecy” Bill Goes Above and Beyond Other Proposals
Back in July, the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act, whose lead sponsor is Connecticut’s own Rep. Rosa DeLauro, was still just being tossed around. At the time, I noted that there was criticism of the statistics being used to justify the law.
Now, numerous outlets are suggesting that the bill is close to passage (
— There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics
—– Mark Twain
Given that Mark Twain is one of Hartford’s most famous residents (now "celebrating" 100 years since his death), it seems appropriate to invoke another one of his famous sayings. .jpg)
Time and again, statistics keep getting raised to the
I have often said that whether an employee is viewed as being treated "fairly" may predict whether an employment decision will later be upheld by a judge or jury. 
A recent study, however, shows that issues of "fairness" relating to employment decision may also affect a worker’s outlook on life. A Washington Post article has