The National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo announced in a memo yesterday that noncompete agreements in employment contracts violate federal labor law except in limited circumstances, because they interfere with employees’ rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“the Act”) to engage in concerted activity to improve their wages
On May 18, 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a technical assistance document explaining the interplay of various established aspects of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (“Title VII”) and an employer’s use of artificial intelligence and other automated systems. This technical assistance is released as a follow-up to the EEOC’s
A recent wave of pay transparency laws has left many employers apprehensive about recruiting across state lines. Pay transparency refers to the practice of making employee compensation figures visible to others – internally, externally, or both. Roughly 1 in 4 U.S. workers lives in a state or locality with a salary transparency law in place
We recently reported on the National Labor Relations Board’s McLaren Macomb decision, which held that employers commit an unfair labor practice by merely proffering a severance agreement including broad confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses, regardless of whether the employee actually signs the agreement. The Board’s General Counsel (“GC”) has now issued a Guidance Memorandum explaining her
On March 13, 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) released its Annual Report for fiscal year (“FY”) 2022, demonstrating a significant increase in the number of charges of discrimination filed with the agency, as well as emails and calls to the agency’s contact center, from the year prior.
A total of 73,485 new
The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) ruled this week in the McLaren Macomb case, a decision applicable to both non-unionized and unionized employers, that merely including standard confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions in a severance agreement violates the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”). The new Biden administration Board found that such provisions “interfere with, restrain
On February 22, 2023, the United States Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision holding that an employee who is paid a day rate (without any weekly guarantee) must be paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) because day rates are inconsistent with the Department of Labor (“DOL”) regulations governing many exemptions from the
The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (“SECURE 2.0”), signed into law by President Biden on December 29, 2022, is another round of retirement reforms that began with the original SECURE Act (i.e., the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act”) passed in 2019. SECURE 2.0 is memorialized in “Division T” of the
The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced today that it will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on October 13, 2022, in order “to help employers and workers determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act.” This marks the Biden Administration’s second attempt to rescind the
Employers may no longer require Covid-19 testing for on-site employees across the board. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced on July 12, 2022, that “going forward employers will need to assess whether current pandemic circumstances and individual workplace circumstances justify viral screening testing of employees to prevent workplace transmission of COVID-19.”
This means that