Troutman Pepper Locke's Labor + Employment Group

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Crisis concerns have occurred from the time of the pharaohs up through the Enron or Tylenol episodes of the last decade, and as recently as the VW manipulation of emission data.  What may be a small concern for one company could be a huge liability for another.  For employers, when a crisis erupts, the consequences can be a game of “Wheel of Fortune” – a misfortune, if handled improperly, or good fortune, for the employer’s reputation, to come out unscathed. A crisis management plan is no “one size fits all”.

More than ever before, companies are turning to contingent workers to meet their staffing needs.  Indeed, according to a recent SAP and Oxford Economics report, 83% of executives state that their companies are increasing their use of contingent workers.  But which type of contingent worker is best for your company? Leased employees? Temporary employees? Independent contractors? Companies often find themselves internally debating this issue. But with the penalties and liability associated with misclassification and handling of contingent workers so steep, there is no need to have this debate alone.

A Gartner Inc. Executive Program survey predicts that 50% of companies will require employees to provide their own devices for their jobs by 2017. If your employees use their own mobile phones to do work, it’s quite possible your company’s confidential information walks out the door every night. This raises cybersecurity concerns for a company’s intellectual property and confidential trade secrets. The need to secure a company’s protected information must also be balanced with an employee’s right to privacy. However, technology continues to push the expectation of worker productivity to wearable technologies (Apple Watch, anyone?). Does your company employ a BYOD policy? Are you confident that your company’s information is secure?

CIRCLE PUZZLE.v3

Troutman Sanders invites in-house counsel, HR professionals and other executives and managers charged with labor and human resources responsibilities to attend a half-day labor & employment seminar to learn the latest news on recent employment cases, hear best practices in HR strategies and understand how to remain compliant with key HR laws.

The National Labor Relations Board issued a landmark decision yesterday, reversing its precedent and establishing a new standard for determining when entities can be considered “joint employers” under the National Labor Relations Act. The 3-2 decision in Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc. held that Browning-Ferris, the owner and operator of a recycling facility, was a joint employer with its contractor, who provided workers (sorters, screen cleaners and housekeepers) to Browning-Ferris through a temporary labor services agreement. In its decision, the Board departed from its prior joint employer standard in significant ways. The new standard will make it much easier to establish a joint-employer relationship under the NLRA. Workers formerly excluded from union representation as non-employees could now be considered members of a collective bargaining unit with legal rights to negotiate terms and conditions of their employment through a union.

If you are a federal contractor subject to Section 503, then you are aware of the new regulations that were released in September 2013. While those regulations were released nearly two years ago, the most burdensome of these requirements (implementation of the Subpart C requirements) have not yet been implemented by most contractors because of the transition year period that allowed contractors to delay compliance with Subpart C. As contractors have been permitted to delay compliance, we have seen virtually no enforcement from OFCCP of the Subpart C requirements in audits. That is all about to change.

Managing interpersonal conflict in the workplace is always a delicate and time-consuming duty for managers and Human Resources personnel.  But what happens when an employee claims that he or she suffers from a disability due to stress from working with a specific manager or supervisor?  Must the employer accommodate the alleged disability by transferring the employee (or the supervisor!) to another role within the company?  According to a recent opinion from the California Court of Appeals, Higgins-Williams v. Sutter Medical Foundation, 237 Cal. App. 4th 78 (3d Dist. 2015), the answer is No.