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
As I continue a deeper dive into new Connecticut employment laws, Public Act 21-27 adds three new parameters for the existing requirement that an employer provide a lactation room or other location in the workplace for a mother to express her milk.
Previously, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 31-40w only required that such room or location
Maybe it’s the Delta variant. Or maybe the publicity regarding Walmart and Disney. But over the last two weeks or so, there’s been a renewed interest in whether employers can mandate vaccines in Connecticut.
Indeed, we have been fielding lots of questions from employers (and friends and family) about mandatory vaccination policies. But many of
The laws regarding the protections owed to pregnant employees got far broader a few years back. In fact, the statutory provision prohibiting discrimination against pregnant employees has eleven key items. Rather than tackle them in separate posts, we’ll “super-size” this post to cover it all.
The main law is set forth at Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 46a-60(b)(7), though it is to be read in conjunction with the state’s broad anti-discrimination laws.
The key prohibitions state that it shall be a “discriminatory employment practice” for an employer (or the employer’s agent):
(A) To terminate a woman’s employment because of her pregnancy;
(B) to refuse to grant to that employee a reasonable leave of absence for disability resulting from her pregnancy;
(C) to deny to that employee, who is disabled as a result of pregnancy, any compensation to which she is entitled as a result of the accumulation of disability or leave benefits accrued pursuant to plans maintained by the employer;
(D) to fail or refuse to reinstate the employee to her original job or to an equivalent position with equivalent pay and accumulated seniority, retirement, fringe benefits and other service credits upon her signifying her intent to return unless, in the case of a private employer, the employer’s circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so;
(E) to limit, segregate or classify the employee in a way that would deprive her of employment opportunities due to her pregnancy;
(F) to discriminate against an employee or person seeking employment on the basis of her pregnancy in the terms or conditions of her employment;
(G) to fail or refuse to make a reasonable accommodation for an employee or person seeking employment due to her pregnancy, unless the employer can demonstrate that such accommodation would impose an undue hardship on such employer;
Continue Reading Employment Law Checklist Project: The 11 Things You Should Know About Pregnant Employees
Late Friday, the House passed the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act bill that passed the Senate earlier in May. Governor Lamont has indicated that he will sign the measure. As such, big changes are coming, though some of the biggest changes are are still a few years off.
You can review the bill here
Late on Tuesday (April 23, 2019) the CHRO released new Legal Enforcement Guidance on “Pregnancy, Childbirth, or Related Conditions at Work”.
Or you might call it a “Bluepaper” instead – as a “one-pager” on the subject called it.
That one-pager was prepared by the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School’s Jerome
Lawyers love their cocktail chatter. And at a recent bar event, an interesting hypothetical came up among lawyers:
Suppose an employee is trying to get pregnant and is thinking about infertility treatments. She’s considering time off for rest, and perhaps even for some in vitro fertilization (IVF) appointments. Perhaps even the doctor has said that
Last week I talked about the new state law regarding pregnancy discrimination that is going into effect on October 1, 2017. In that post, I mentioned a new notice that was required to comply with the law.
Although there is no set form that is required to be used, the Connecticut Department of Labor has
For those unfamiliar with the way a lot of Connecticut laws get implemented, October 1st could seem like just another day. (Though for my kids, they would be impressed that it was a different October 1st in 1982 that EPCOT opened at Disney World.)
But a lot of bills that are passed by the Connecticut General Assembly go into effect on October 1st each year. This year is no exception.
For employers, the biggest of these bills is the new law concerning “Pregnant Women in the Workplace”. I’ve previously recapped the law for pregnant employees in a prior post way back in May, but because we’re getting close to implementation, it’s time for a little refresher.
Existing law makes it a discriminatory practice to:
Those rules remain unchanged. But the new law revises some other provisions and adds more to the protections. Effective October 1st, it will now also be unlawful to:
The changes don’t stop there. The new law also explains that the word “pregnancy” will also include “pregnancy, childbirth or a related condition, including but not limited to, lactation”. It also expands the definition of “reasonable accommodation ” and “undue hardship”.
Continue Reading Two Weeks Until New Protections for Pregnant Employees Become Effective
Well, the Connecticut General Assembly ended earlier this week and, as predicted, it ended with a whimper and not a bang. Many employment law proposals failed to receive votes, including those on minimum wage and Paid FMLA, leaving many employers (and the CBIA) breathing a bit of a sigh of relief.
I’ve previously recapped