The job search process was frustrating for my firstborn, Mateo.  He had his coder certificate and ten years’ experience as a security and IT specialist but when he applied for certain roles, even at his current employer, he would automatically get turned down in the application process just because he didn’t have a college degree.  Unfortunately, my son isn’t alone in his experience. More than 70 million workers in the United States, over half of the country’s workforce, do not have a bachelor’s degree but between 2008 and 2017, over 70 percent of new U.S. job postings required a col ..read more

Federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), Rehabilitation Act[1], and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA”)[2], and similar state laws require certain employers to provide reasonable accommodations for employees’ known limitations related to a disability or pregnancy.  Requests for teleworking arrangements as a reasonable accommodation did not begin with the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are certainly one of its lasting legacies.  Since such requests have skyrocketed, courts have found telework to be a reasonable accommodation more often, but not as often as on ..read more

On January 17, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in two cases challenging the continued validity of the Chevron doctrine. The two cases – Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce – challenge a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires commercial fishing vessels to pay the salaries of federal monitors aboard those ships. Over the past forty years, Chevron has cast a wide net and overturning it is sure to have much broader implications than just the fishing industry. Employers should be prepa ..read more

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has granted certiorari to hear Department of State v. Muñoz, at the request of the Biden Administration. The stakes are high.  It challenges the longstanding “doctrine of consular non-reviewability”—a monolithic judicial principle that shields from review decisions made at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world regarding visa applications and admissibility into the U.S. Broadly speaking, this doctrine is invoked by the federal government to support a position that they need not provide detailed information regarding visa decisions. Not to the applic ..read more

Misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor can have significant ramifications for a business, particularly in terms of exposure to claims for unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), payroll taxes under IRS rules, or state taxes, unemployment, and other contributions under state law. As previously covered by HR Legalist here, Republicans and Democrats have been locked in a years-long battle to decide which test to apply to determine if a worker is properly classified as an independent contractor. Democrats generally advocate for an employee-friendly test, with ..read more

This holiday season, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the “Board”) has bestowed a gift on organized labor. On December 26, 2023, significant, labor-friendly changes made by the NLRB for processing representation cases will go into effect.   The changes which are often referred to as the “ambush” or “quickie” election rules, mark a return to key election procedures originally put in place by the Obama-era Board in 2014. As HR Legalist discussed at the time, “quickie” election rules dramatically accelerate the timeline between when a union files a petition to represent a gro ..read more

As HR Legalist predicted when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced the proposed rule in September 2022, the pendulum of federal labor and employment law has once again swung in an employee-friendly direction. Yesterday, the NLRB released a final rule regarding the joint-employer doctrine.  The final rule, published in the federal register today and scheduled to go into effect on December 26, 2023, provides a broadened standard for when two employers that conduct business together are considered to be joint employers—and thus required to bargain with unions and subject ..read more

This fall, employers may be faced with tough choices about how to handle overtime pay – at least, if the US Department of Labor (“DOL”) has its way.  Today, the DOL announced a notice of proposed rulemaking that would make it harder for employers to exempt certain workers from time-and-a-half overtime pay for working over 40 hours per week.  It does this by raising the monetary threshold, under which most employees must be paid overtime, from the current level of $35,568 per year to $55,068 per year. The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires employees to be paid overtime unless ..read more

On Friday, August 25, 2023, The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a highly anticipated decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC which fundamentally shifts the paradigm governing how unions organize American workplaces. Prior to Cemex, unions seeking to organize a workplace needed to either: Demonstrate sufficient employee showing of interest (typically cards from at least 30% or more of the employees for the petitioned for unit) along with their petition to the NLRB seeking an election or Seek voluntary recognition from the employer by presenting a majority interest am ..read more

Over the past decades, standards for profanity, inappropriate social media use, and other workplace issues commonly addressed in employee handbooks have changed along with the political makeup of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”).  In a recent decision which we assure our readers has nothing to do with politics, the NLRB cracked down on employee handbook language, rejecting the employer-friendly standard it established in 2017 (in the Boeing decision), and replacing it with an approach that “builds on and revises” its old standard established in 2004 (in the Lutheran Heritage de ..read more