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
In the continuing saga of the (possible) use of Environmental Social and Governance (“ESG”) factors by retirement plan fiduciaries under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”), on Thursday, March 23, 2023, the House in a 219-200 vote failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto regarding a joint resolution of
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 United States Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a nationwide policy that gives credits for companies that make “voluntary self-disclosures” for corporate misconduct. The policy builds on changes to DOJ’s Corporate Enforcement Policy that was announced in January.
The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices’ (USAO) Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, which was prepared by a Corporate Criminal
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