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The beginning of the new year often brings fresh resolve, brightened attitudes, and a renewed sense of hope for the coming year.  Savvy employers harness those emotions in their workforce and engage their employees to reach new goals and achievements.  But behind the scenes, employers also need to be aware…

For those who missed it while getting an early start to their Labor Day weekend, late last week a federal judge closed the door on regulations that would have significantly changed overtime exemptions after previously leaving that door ajar.

Most employers became very familiar — and concerned — with the…

Earlier this month, a widely-recognized Fortune 50 company reached a $1.7 million agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to resolve nearly a decade of litigation over the company’s nation-wide policy of discharging workers who do not return from medical leave after 12 months.

While this settlement still requires approval by a federal judge, the litigation itself (and the size and scope of the settlement, which also includes changes to the company’s policy, notice-posting, record-keeping, reporting, and other requirements) should be instructive for employers dealing with a common issue: what to do with employees who are granted a medical leave but cannot return to duty at the end of a set time period.

One of President Trump’s chief agenda items has been immigration enforcement.  While the President’s intent may be to keep out terrorists, remove undocumented foreign nationals, and eliminate fraudulent visa practices, these efforts can also have a tremendous impact on U.S. employers.  One of the ways this administration has ramped up…

Are we moving into an era of less aggressive enforcement by the federal agencies tasked with responsibility over our nation’s labor and employment laws? It certainly seems so given several signals from the current administration and the federal agencies themselves.

Summary

A nationwide junction was issued Tuesday evening blocking implementation of the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rules increasing the minimum salary levels required for most white collar exemptions. These new rules had been scheduled to go into effect on December 1, and would have raised the minimum annual salary level for most exemptions from $23,660 to $47,476. The injunction halts enforcement of the rule until the Department of Labor receives a contrary order from the issuing court or an appellate court. But, since Texas is in the Fifth Circuit, which is a traditionally conservative court, the Department of Labor faces an uphill climb and it is unlikely that the new rules will go into effect in the foreseeable future.

As we all learned in school, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws that “abridge the freedom of speech.”  Employer-created rules and decisions are not acts of Congress, of course, and are not subject to the First Amendment.  So, employers can terminate their at-will employees (all employees without an employment contract) for a good or even a bad reason, including having a bad attitude, right?  Wrong, according to the National Labor Relations Board, at least when that bad attitude expresses itself in voicing concerns about their job.

In another example of the National Labor Relations Board (“the Board”) reaching into a non-union employer’s workplace, it ordered dance production companies that run two Las Vegas shows (Vegas! The Show and The BeatleShow) to reinstate several dancers whose employment was terminated for performance and attitude problems that spanned several years of time.  David Saxe Prods., LLC, 364 NLRB No. 100 (Aug. 26, 2016).  In a letter to one of these employees, the owner of the production companies stated: