Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
In my view, the proffer, maintenance, and enforcement of a non-compete provision that reasonably tends to chill employees from engaging in Section 7 activity … violate Section 8(a)(1) unless the provision is narrowly tailored to special circumstances justifying the infringement on employee rights.
With that sentence from NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's just-published memo — entitled, Non-Compete Agreements that Violate the National Labor Relations Act — Ms. Abruzzo sent employment lawyers (including this employment lawyer) scrambling to understand exactly what she said and what she means.
Let's say you have an employee who works 40 hours per week at the rate of $13.00 per hour. Now let's say that same employee needs to start working 20 hours of overtime per week to meet your needs. You still, however, want that employee to earn to same effective rate of $13.00 per week, so you reduce the employee's straight-time hourly rate of $11.15. When the need to work overtime ends, you then return the employee to the original $13.00 rate. Is the reduction of the employee's base hourly rate legal under the Fair Labor Standards Act?
According to the 11th Circuit in Thompson v. Regions Security Services, the answer is "not unless you want a jury to decide the legality of your pay practices under the FLSA."
We hold that, for a district court to facilitate notice of an FLSA suit to other employees, the plaintiffs must show a "strong likelihood" that those employees are similarly situated to the plaintiffs themselves. That standard requires a showing greater than the one necessary to create a genuine issue of fact, but less than the one necessary to show a preponderance. The strong-likelihood standard is familiar to the district courts; it would confine the issuance of court-approved notice, to the extent practicable, to employees who are in fact similarly situated; and it would strike the same balance that courts have long struck in analogous circumstances.
With those words, the 6th Circuit ended decades of uncertainty in Fair Labor Standards Act wage and hour collective action lawsuits in my Circuit on the issue of when in such a lawsuit a district court should determine which employees properly belong in the the class.
As the weather warms up around the country and spring quickly transitions to summer, festival season will begin … including my personal favorite, the beer festival.
Beer festivals, however, raise a few specific wage and hour traps for participating breweries. Here's the 411.
"Mature orthodox Christian faith as defined by the Apostles' Creed."
That is one of the qualifications listed in a job posting for a filmmaker position. The employer — the International Justice Mission — is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the mission of which is to combat human trafficking and slavery, violence against women and children, and police abuse of power worldwide.
Can IJM make a certain religious faith a job qualification or otherwise ask about religion as part of the hiring process?
It depends on whether "religion" is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) for that employer.
AI is shiny. AI is new. AI is sexy. And AI is problematic and not entirely understood. It is for those last reasons that, according to HR Brew, corporate America is either restricting employees' use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or banning them outright.
I don't have the answer for which of allowing, limiting, or banning generative AI is the correct answer for your business. You should, however, consider these three risks in evaluating whether, when, and how your employees use generative AI at work.
I spent five days this week with 12,000 other people at the Craft Brewers Conference. You read that number correctly, 12,000. It's something I never could have imagined doing this time last year, or even a few short months ago.
This week not-so-coincidentally also marked the official end of the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies. This end doesn't mean Covid isn't a thing anymore. It still exists and it still can still make you sick. It just means that it's now endemic instead of a pandemic.
What's now going to change as a result? Frankly, not much. It's been months since most of us have moved on from Covid. We've stopped masking. We've stopped social distancing. Heck, as much as many of lauded "work from home" and "remote meetings" as the future of work, many of us have returned to our workplaces and to in-person meetings.
As cautious as I was personally during the pandemic, I'm happy to be back to "normal." Humans are social creatures, and our brains need social interaction. The end of pandemic, however, doesn't mean I'll throw caution to the wind in every situation. For example, I don't think I'll ever not mask up on an airplane. With four shots and one bout of Covid in my system, and less Covid circulating in the community, I'm just willing to take and accept more risk with the virus than I was a few months ago, and certain more than a year ago.
Three cheers to the end of the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies. It's been a long three years and two months. But we made it across the finish line. Let's just hope that we apply public health lessons we learned and do a better job managing the next public health crisis that confronts us.
Heather Armstrong, the "queen of the mommy bloggers" and the author of Dooce.com, is dead from an apparent suicide after a relapse in her sobriety. She was only 47 years old. She leaves behind two children and a legacy as one of the most important social media influencers ever.
In February 2002, Heather became the first person of which I'm aware to be fired for something she wrote online. One of her co-workers discovered that Heather was the author of an anonymous blog that, in part, discussed her workplace and her co-workers. Most of what she wrote was unflattering. That person anonymously reported Heather to their HR department. She was then fired because of some of the things she had written.
In these turbulent times, so many know they want to do something about inequity, but don't know where to start. Unfortunately, concerns about saying the wrong thing or not having the power to create change lead many to do nothing. It is essential for leaders to understand the concepts of both systemic and individual privilege, because when they do, they will find that their privileges are actually their superpowers.
It is with great sadness that we announce that the Founders Detroit Taproom will be permanently closing its doors today.
Unfortunately, our Detroit location has not been immune to the struggle to regain foot traffic after temporary Covid closures that have impacted restaurants and bars across the nation.
That was the message that Founders Brewing Company posted across its social media channels earlier this week.
There is no doubt that the bar and restaurant industry has struggled throughout the pandemic and, in pockets, continues to struggle. Consider, however, that less than three hours before Founders announced its Detroit taproom closure, it was sued by a Black employee claiming that the brewery promoted her "purely for optic reasons" and subjected her to "egregious racial harassment" that was "so objectively racially hostile that she had no choice but to resign" last week.
