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The Employer Handbook Blog
When an employee sues, what law applies when they’ve worked in two states?
Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I read a recent NJ federal court decision where a plaintiff began working for the defendant in New Jersey but later requested and received a transfer to Pennsylvania.
And that’s when things went awry. Continue reading
A federal judge has nixed the NLRB’s proposed new joint-employer rule
On Friday evening, a Texas federal judge blocked a proposed National Labor Relations Board rule that would have made it much easier for employees to unionize when he determined that enforcing the Board’s proposed joint employer rule “would be contrary to the law” and “arbitrary and capricious.”
I’ll give you a little refresher on the Board’s proposal. Then, we’ll examine where it fell apart. Continue reading
Is it racist to falsely accuse someone of being a racist?
Let’s explore whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against accusations of racism.
Can states legally ban “woke” training in the workplace?
In 2022, Florida passed The Individual Freedom Act. But most people know this law as the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which stands for “Stop the Wrongs to our Kids and Employees.”
Whatever we call it, the Act says employers cannot subject “any individual, as a condition of employment,” to “training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” a certain set of beliefs. The list of banned subjects generally relates to “woke” teachings on race, color, sex, or national origin. Florida employers can host these trainings but cannot require employees to attend them.
An employer that fired an employee for a positive marijuana test may have discriminated against him too.
Right or wrong, an honest belief may be all it takes to proffer a nondiscriminatory reason for an adverse employment action. Continue reading
The Employer Handbook Friday Zoom Happy Hour Returns on Friday, March 8 at Noon ET
The U.S. Department of Labor rules on analyzing and determining who is an employee or independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) take effect on March 11, 2024.
Has your business procrastinated in preparing for them?
If so, do not worry; I’ve got your back.
Continue reading
Instead of hiring a lawyer, a business owner ordered to pay wages used AI to prepare his appeal. It was a giant clusterf**k!
A multi-year dispute over unpaid wages went from bad to a whole lot worse for a Midwest business owner when he decided to appeal a trial court ruling that he owed over $300k in wages, damages, and attorney’s fees by representing himself and hiring an “online consultant” who used artificial intelligence to prepare an appellate brief. Continue reading
Should Mrs. Doubtfire have been paid overtime?
It’s not like I woke up in a cold sweat, fixated on this obscure bit of Fair Labor Standards Act minutiae.
But I did read this Eleventh Circuit decision last night, which did posit whether “Julie Andrews’s Mary Poppins, Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma, Fran Drescher’s Nanny Fine, Robin Williams’s Mrs. Doubtfire, or Vin Diesel’s Shane Wolfe…would have been entitled to overtime pay in the real world.”
So, let’s find out. Continue reading