Workforce Bulletin

by: Adam C. Abrahms, James S. Frank, Kara M. Maciel, and Steven M. Swirsky

President Obama has taken action designed to bolster the National Labor Relations Board’s continuing move to bolster unions and take the National Labor Relations Act further into non-union workplaces. On April 9, 2013, President Obama announced his plan to submit three more nominees to serve the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). If these and the two other pending nominations are confirmed this would bring the NLRB to its full complement of five Members. 

These new nominations – who must be ...

The April 2013 issue of Take 5 was written by David W. Garland, Chair of Epstein Becker Green's Labor and Employment Steering Committee and a Member of the Firm in the New York and Newark offices.

In it, he summarizes five recent labor and employment actions that employers should consider:

1. EEOC Releases Letter Addressing Wellness Programs and Reasonable Accommodation Obligations
2. Paying Interns May Not Be Enough to Stave Off Wage and Hour Claims
3. House Committee Votes Out Bill Prohibiting NLRB from Acting Without a Quorum
4. New York City Human Rights Law Expanded to Prohibit ...

It is common practice for financial services companies, through in-house or outside legal counsel, to send letters to former employees upon the employee’s resignation in an effort to remind the employee about his or her post-employment contractual obligations to the company, whether through a non-competition agreement, or non-solicitation / non-disclosure restrictive covenants. A recent court decision affirms that companies and their counsel are shielded from liability for defamation that may arise from the publication of those letters due to the absolute privilege ...

Allen B. Roberts, a Member of Firm in the Labor and Employment practice and co-chair of the firm’s Whistleblowing and Compliance Subpractice Group, in the New York office, wrote an article titled “Impact: Employers Brace for Change – Top 5 Issues Facing Businesses, as appeared in Insurance Advocate.”

Following is an excerpt:

By popular account, the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) would preserve the base of insureds and extend health insurance coverage to as many as another 32 million Americans. That estimate could be wrong if ACA disrupts patterns and experience of spouse ...

By Michelle Capezza

I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, which includes a call to action for men and women to end gender bias in the workplace.  Yet, Lean In is not only a discussion about gender bias and stereotypes, women being held back or holding back themselves but, it’s a call to action as a society to work together toward equality.  A common question that has followed for many who have read the book is where do we begin; how can we move forward as a society to address the issues that face all of us in the workplace, men and women of all races, cultures, ages, and religious ...

By Marisa S. Ratinoff and Amy Messigian

In a matter of first impression, the California Court of Appeal held last month that an employee who exhausts all permissible leave under the Pregnancy Disability Leave (“PDL”) provisions of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) and is terminated by her employer may nevertheless state a cause of action for discrimination.

In Sanchez v. Swissport, Inc., the plaintiff, a former employee of Swissport, alleged that she was diagnosed with a high risk pregnancy requiring bed rest in February 2009 and was due to give birth in ...

By:  John F. Fullerton III

The Second Circuit has given class action waivers another shot in the arm.  In Parisi v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. (pdf), plaintiff argued that because she had agreed to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims against her employer, but could not proceed in a class-wide arbitration, she must be permitted to pursue her Title VII pattern-or-practice sex discrimination claim as a class action plaintiff in court; otherwise, her arbitration agreement would constitute an impermissible waiver of a substantive statutory right.   The Court firmly ...