In July 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) filed suit against Cotti Foods Corporation after it allegedly failed to file EEO-1 reports between 2021-2023, despite repeated notice. Last month, the parties entered into a consent decree under which Cotti Foods is required to file three years’ worth of past-due data within 30 days, appoint
Labor and Employment
Addressing Today’s Problem and Avoiding Tomorrow’s Tragedy: Employer Tactics for Responding to and Preventing Workplace Violence
On November 22, 2022, a Virginia Walmart employee reportedly opened fire in a staff break room, killing six co-workers and injuring several others. On January 23, 2023, a California mushroom farm employee shot and killed seven people at two locations, one of which was his place of employment. These tragedies are just two examples of…
Congress Enacts New Protections for Pregnant and Nursing Employees
As part of its $1.7 trillion end-of-year spending bill, Congress passed two laws that provide new rights and protections for pregnant workers and nursing mothers – the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act). Summaries of each law are provided below.
PWFA
Modeled after the…
Thoughts on the new Supreme Court appointee? Well it sounds like good news for employers.
On Saturday, September 26, 2020, President Donald Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as his nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A conservative justice serving for the Court of Appeals covering Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin since 2017, Judge Barrett aligns herself as more of a textualist…
Employers May Have to Provide Pay Data on EEO-1’s
Private employers with more than 100 employees previously have been required to report workforce data across 10 job categories broken down by race, gender and ethnicity. The data is reported annually by October 1 to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) on the EEO-1 form, which currently comprises one page for each facility of…
If I Hire You and Fire You a Short Time Thereafter, it’s Probably Not Because of Your Race, Court Rules
A Federal District Court in the Western District of North Carolina has dismissed a claim of race discrimination by an African-American Lowe’s employee who was fired after seven months of employment. The Court found that the same person who hired him had made the decision to terminate his employment. This fact, according to the Court,…
Trending: Salary History Bans
As of January 1, 2019, Connecticut and Hawaii have joined the ranks of California, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont by adopting state-wide bans against salary history inquires. State and local governments across the country are increasingly introducing and passing legislation prohibiting employers from asking candidates their salary history information, with…
DOL Opines On Improper Overtime Rates
Administering payroll for employees with variable work schedules and hourly rates can cause major headaches for employers. In an effort to simplify and reduce administrative costs, employers are oftentimes tempted to set a standard overtime rate to be paid at a set dollar amount to all employees regardless of variations in compensation rates and actual…
NLRB Extends The Comment Period On Its Proposed New Joint-Employer Rule
On September 14, 2018, the National Labor Relations Board published a new proposed rule that attempts to reverse the joint-employer rule created in the Board’s Browning-Ferris Industries decision of 2015. (Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc., 362 NLRB No. 186 (2015). On December 10, 2018, the Board issued a notice that it was extending until…
What to Do with Exiting Employees’ Unused Vacation Time? Stick to Your Policy, Says Ohio Court of Appeals
When an employee leaves an organization, one issue the employer often confronts is whether to pay the employee for unused vacation time or other paid time off (PTO). The employer may seek to withhold PTO for myriad reasons: from encouraging employees to use their PTO during employment, to offsetting an employee debt, to encouraging compliance…