Workplace violence injunctions are relatively easy to obtain, as judges are motivated to err on the side of preventing jobsite violence. Does that need for expediency trump the constitutional rights of the accused...
Employment Law Letter
There’s a growing tendency for workers to request mobility in the labor market. Coupled with this is a growing tendency for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees. This phenomenon...
Q: We’re a privately owned company with fewer than 100 employees. Do we have to follow the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act regulations in the event we decide to conduct a temporary layoff soon...
Q: An employee with an alleged history of substance abuse was found passed out in our parking lot with his car door open. The supervisor who found him made sure he was breathing and then went inside, leaving him there...
In a recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (whose rulings apply to all New York employers) upheld the district court’s award of over $570,000 in attorneys’ fees to a law firm that recovered only...
New York City (NYC) employers have been on edge ever since the city enacted legislation requiring a “bias audit” and disclosures if they use artificial intelligence (AI) to make certain automated employment-related...
In a recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit (whose rulings apply to all New Jersey employers) confirmed that the ABC Test—long used by the New Jersey Department of Labor—sets forth the proper...
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission has issued long-awaited guidance, but it’s only provisional. The commission has yet to issue standards on the required certification process for the workplace experts who...
In pursuit of customer satisfaction, employers may be inclined to take a hands-off approach when customers or other third parties exhibit discriminatory conduct towards their employees. This can be a costly mistake...
You would think drafting an arbitration agreement should be simple enough. After all, arbitrating employment discrimination claims was court-approved several decades ago. But issues still persist, as we see in this very...
Words matter, and they matter a lot. Or as someone remarked (and I’m paraphrasing), “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between a lightning bolt and a lightning bug.” Here’s...
Q Our company wants to implement a policy to limit personal cell phone usage only to break times. Can we ask workers to put their phones in their work lockers or on their supervisors’ desks? While such a policy may be...
The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina employers) has become the first appellate court in the country to find that gender...
Minimum wage laws broadly define “employ” as “to suffer or permit to work.” Sometimes, however, being permitted to work doesn’t mean someone is an employee. A recent case from the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals...
On September 30, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed its earlier stance that an employee who used company email for union organizing was lawfully terminated. The decision indicates a possible change...