California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a new batch of worker-friendly laws sponsored by Democrats in the California Assembly and Senate. These laws cover a range of topics from arbitration agreements to workplace safety. AB 51 will garner particular attention because not only does it substantially prohibit arbitration agreements, it criminalizes them. The new law … Continue Reading
On 16 September, the Australian Government announced its intention to seek leave in the High Court to appeal the landmark Full Federal Court decision in Mondelez v AMWU.… Continue Reading
The United States Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division issued two opinion letters on September 10, 2019, addressing certain aspects of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) and Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). DOL opinion letters are not binding law, but provide guidance into how the DOL interprets the laws that … Continue Reading
AB 5, and its “ABC test,” expected to have greatest impact in “gig economy” jobs, but impact certain to be even more widely felt After a summer of lobbying and debating, the California Assembly adopted AB 5, a headline-grabbing law purporting to transform the status of gig-economy workers at companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash. … Continue Reading
There is a law in Poland guaranteeing minimum pay for work. There are rules how its amount is calculated and agreed. There are also upcoming elections in October 2019 which may unexpectedly influence its amount.… Continue Reading
This time concerning how holiday pay should be calculated for those who only work for part of the year, e.g. term-time workers, and arguably proof positive of the old legal maxim that “hard cases make bad law”.… Continue Reading
If you’ve been following our blog, you already know that the topic of employer-mandated arbitration agreements has been a hot issue in recent years for government agencies and in the state and federal courts. Most notably, in May of last year, the United States Supreme Court issued its highly-anticipated decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis, … Continue Reading
In a previous blog [here] I mentioned to you that the social partners – bar one – had come to an agreement on employment conditions for 2019 and 2020. This agreement was then to be further implemented by social partners at an industry level.… Continue Reading
Minnesota Enacts Criminal Penalties for Wage Law Violations Minnesota governor Tim Waltz recently signed legislation that imposes criminal penalties (including felony charges) on employers who engage in “wage theft.” Effective August 1, 2019, employers will be guilty of a felony if they wrongfully withhold an employee’s pay by virtue of underpayment, misclassification, or refusing to … Continue Reading
Although industrial relations did not heavily feature in the Coalition’s election campaign, now that the dust has settled on its re-election the Government has announced a Review of industrial relations laws. The areas to be targeted include:… Continue Reading
On July 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division issued a trio of fact-specific opinion letters offering employers guidance on various pay practices, specifically relating to calculating overtime pay as part of nondiscretionary bonuses, exemptions for paralegals, and rounding practices for calculating hours worked.… Continue Reading
Flowers –v- East of England Ambulance Services NHS Trust this month concerned a claim by a number of workers in the Trust ambulance service that their holiday pay should include an allowance in respect of overtime, both non-guaranteed and voluntary. For these purposes, voluntary overtime was work which the employee was under no obligation to … Continue Reading
Illinois Restricts Use of Artificial Intelligence in Hiring On May 29, 2019, the Illinois Legislature unanimously passed the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act, which, not surprisingly, addresses how employers use artificial intelligence to analyze job applicant video interviews to determine the applicant’s fitness for the position. Under the new law (assuming it is signed by … Continue Reading
Between 23 and 26 May coming, more than 400 million European citizens will have the right to vote in the European Parliament elections, albeit some may perhaps do so more enthusiastically than others. Among those 400 million potential voters, a fair share are in active employment. So what do you need to know about the … Continue Reading
It’s been an active few weeks since our last State Law Round-Up in mid-April 2019, with a number of bills being signed into new laws and case developments impacting employers in many US states over the past few weeks. Colorado Failure to Pay Wages as Theft Effective January 1, 2020, an employer’s failure to pay … Continue Reading
In a recently-released Advice Memorandum dated April 16, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) Office of the General Counsel (“GC”) determined that drivers utilizing Uber Technologies’ smartphone application-based rideshare platform are independent contractors, not employees, under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). In arriving at this conclusion, the GC utilized the independent contractor test … Continue Reading
30 April is to non-recurrent results-based bonus schemes in Belgium what 29 March was to the UK: a doom and gloom deadline that turned out to be … well, no big deal, really.… Continue Reading
Minimum Wage Updates On March 28, 2019, Maryland’s legislators voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15.00 per hour by January 1, 2025 for employers with 15 or more employees and July 1, 2026 for employers with 14 or fewer employees.… Continue Reading
Expanding on their previous post on the subject, on April 3, 2019, Law360 published the following article authored by Squire Patton Boggs labor and employment attorneys Laura Lawless Robertson and Melissa Legault. The U.S. Department of Labor recently issued a trio of opinion letters offering employers guidance in implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Fair Labor … Continue Reading
On March 28, 2019, the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announcing proposed updates to the rules that govern how employers calculate overtime payments under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). As a reminder, the FLSA requires employers to pay additional compensation to non-exempt employees for work that exceeds … Continue Reading
On March 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”), Wage and Hour Division, released an opinion letter, FMLA2019-1-A, stating that employers cannot delay the designation of FMLA-qualifying leave or designate more than 12 weeks of leave (or 26 weeks of military caregiver leave) as FMLA leave.… Continue Reading
Minimum Wage Updates On January 17, 2019, New Jersey’s governor and state legislators agreed to a deal that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15.00 by 2024. The current minimum wage in New Jersey is $8.85 an hour. Under the new law, the state’s minimum wage will increase to $10.00 an hour on July … Continue Reading
Group of 10 reaches agreement on employment conditions In the very early morning of 26 February, the Belgian social partners in the so-called Group of 10 (the main representatives of employers’ federations and trade unions) reached the bones of an agreement on employment conditions for 2019-2020. In this draft agreement, the margin for increases in … Continue Reading
For years – spanning two Presidential administrations – employers have been awaiting long-anticipated updates to the overtime exemption regulations to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Since 2004, to be exempt from the FLSA’s overtime compensation requirements under the so-called “white collar” exemptions (e.g., executive, administrative, professional employees), employees must be paid on a salary … Continue Reading
