Employment Law Alerts

 In September 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") expanded its collection efforts to include summary W-2 pay data and total hours worked by race, ethnicity, and gender from employers that already file the EEO-1 report (e.g., private employers with over 100 employees and federal contractors with more than 50 employees). This initiative was intended to help close the pay gap ...

  On February 24, 2019, New York state's Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act ("GENDA") went into effect.  GENDA prohibits all employers with four or more employees from discriminating against workers on the basis of their actual or perceived gender identity, gender expression, or their transgender status.   Gender identity or expression is defined as having gender identity, self image, ...

There is generally a gnashing of teeth when a key employee leaves for a competitor, and that gnashing may evolve into weeping when an employer finds that its noncompetition protections are unenforceable. Massachusetts has long followed most states by enforcing noncompetition agreements that are narrowly-tailored to protect the company’s legitimate business interests, without being over-broad. The ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") announced that it has delayed the filing due date for the EEO-1 Report. The EEO-1 Report is a compliance survey mandated by federal statute and regulations. The survey requires company employment data to be categorized by race/ethnicity, gender, and job category. The data which employers report in the survey helps the EEOC in deterring ...

As the partial federal government shutdown continues, more companies are being affected, directly and indirectly, and business owners, executives and human resources professionals need to be very careful about how they respond. Potential areas of concern include, but are not limited to, the following: 1.  Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). Complying with FLSA during the partial government shut ...

Much has been written about the #MeToo movement over the past several months, and, justifiably, this will continue to be the case until such time as sexual harassment is no longer plaguing our society. The attention this movement has gotten has not gone unnoticed by politicians at both the state and local level, resulting in efforts to address workplace sexual harassment through legislation ...

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Dolgencorp, LLC, d/b/a Dollar General Corporation serves as a critical lesson of what can happen when managers are not properly prepared. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held in this case that Linda Atkins, an insulin-dependent diabetic, was subjected to disability discrimination when her employer, Dollar General, failed to accommodate a reasonable, ...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (the "D.C. Circuit"), in Peck. v. SELEX Systems Integration, Inc., has affirmed a district court's judgment that a terminated employee was not eligible for severance pay after he refused to accept a transfer from his marketing position in D.C. to a quality-control position in Kansas. Background The employee was employed in an executive marketing position with the ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") recently issued a report about age discrimination that reads like a wake-up call. Essentially, 50 years have passed since the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA") and age discrimination is still a significant problem in our society. The EEOC noted: After 50 years of a federal law whose purpose is to promote the ...

Accounts of workplace harassment involving employees, entertainers, athletes, and students has been well-publicized in 2018. This publicity has led to the widely-known "#MeToo movement." Some states and municipalities, including New York State ("NYS") and New York City ("NYC"), have responded by enacting relevant legislation. The message has been sent that employers should carefully examine their ...