Employment Law Blog

WEBINAR - Scary Stories from the HR Department, Chapter 4: Little Shot of Horrors

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ALERT: NLRB General Counsel Signals Sea Change in Labor Regulation

For more on this subject, register here for our October 12th webinar, All Handbooks on Deck: How the Changing Tides of the NLRB May Lead Your Employee Policies into Rough Waters.

The new National Labor Relations Board General Counsel has issued a memo outlining her issues priorities, and it’s a doozy for employers. The broad outlines of the policy reconsiderations are massive in scope, effectively revisiting the entirety of the NLRB output over the last four years. While a discussion of the larger implications of each policy provision will be forthcoming, here is a general outline of what’s in store from the NLRB going forward, and employers should already be set to make some changes. More >

Employers: Don’t Let Bad Weather Rain on Your Parade

The weather outside is terrible, and you want to close down your business for the duration. Can you cancel a work day or send your employees home early without pay for the duration of the closure? The answer is a bit complicated, and it depends on each employee’s classification as non-exempt or exempt where the overtime rules are concerned. More >

Political Speech in the Workplace: Can I Just Make It Go Away?

Every four years like clockwork, it happens: presidential politics becomes the focus of our national attention, seemingly dominating all aspects of our lives. The national conversation becomes one of campaign rhetoric, and anecdotal evidence suggests that it has only gotten more divisive. The conventional wisdom says that the two things one is never supposed to discuss at work are religion and politics, yet the political conversation can’t help but spill into the workplace, with the attendant potential for division and conflict. As an employer trying to foster productivity and keep the peace in the workplace, is there anything you can do? As it turns out, there’s quite a lot. More >

Recap of the Webinar, "The New Overtime Rules Are Coming - Are You Ready?"

On  Thursday, July 30th, McBrayer hosted a webinar entitled, "The New Overtime Rules Are Coming - Are You Ready?" The webinar was hosted by attorney Cynthia L. Effinger of McBrayer's Louisville office. This well-attended drew participants eager to understand how the recently-released Department of Labor Notice of Proposed Rulemaking will affect employers throughout the state and nation. This webinar focused on the following core concepts: More >

Is it Time to Review Your Employee Handbooks?

On March 18^th, National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) General Counsel Richard F. Griffin, Jr., issued a report[1] (“the Report”) concerning employer rules and employee handbooks in light of recent employer rule cases. Most of the violations found in these cases occurred under the first prong of the two-prong the test in Lutheran Heritage Village-Livonia,[2] which looks to whether an employer rule explicitly restricts protected activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). The Report used these cases as a guide to provide clear examples of both illegal rules and their legal counterparts, giving employers a valuable tool in evaluating employee handbooks and workplace rules. More >

Telecommuting Employees and Unauthorized Overtime – Must the Employer Pay?

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HIPAA Considerations In The Event Of Employee Death or Incapacitation

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, otherwise known as HIPAA, acts in part to provide federal protection for identifiable health information retained by covered entities, which includes most businesses that offer company health plans. While many employers have policies and procedures in place to ensure HIPAA compliance in routine, every day matters relating to the management of employee health data, few employers have developed policies or even considered how to manage protected health information in the unfortunate event of employee death or incapacitation. More >

blogs-Employment-Law-Blog,updated-enhanced-eeoc-enforcement-guidance-what-does-it-mean-for-employers-and-pregnant-employees

In our previous blog post, we discussed and detailed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the stringent Enforcement Guidelines distributed by the EEOC this summer. On December 3^rd, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Young v. United Parcel Service, and decide whether the EEOC interpreted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act correctly in deciding that an employer is “obligated to treat a pregnant employee temporarily unable to perform the functions of her job the same as it treats other employees similarly unable to perform their jobs, whether by providing modified tasks, alternative assignments, leave, or fringe benefits.” More >

Updated & Enhanced EEOC Enforcement Guidance – What Does it Mean for Employers and Pregnant Employees?

In 2013 alone, 5,342 discrimination claims were filed alleging pregnancy discrimination. The result – employers paid out over $17 million in monetary benefits last year. In fact, the EEOC’s statistics do not include monetary benefits obtained through litigation; thus, employers likely paid out a significant amount more than $17 million. To avoid adding to this figure, employers must pay particular attention to pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, be mindful of what is required to comply with federal and state law, and take precautions to ensure that no discriminatory practices exist in the workplace. More >