Duff on Hospitality Law

On June 2, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to approve a $15 minimum wage ordinance. Mayor Ed Murray signed it the next day. The ordinance provides that all employers will be required to reach the $15 per hour wage over a period of years, depending on their number of employees. Very generally speaking, and subject to a number of specifics touched on below, employers with 500 or fewer employees will be required to pay $10.00 an hour starting on April 1, 2015, and will make annual increases culminating in $15.00 an hour in 2021. Employers with more than 500 employers will need to pay $11.00 an hour starting in April 2015, and will reach $15.00 an hour in 2017 (2018 for employers who contribute to employee health insurance premiums).

Employers are grappling not only with how to manage the logistics of the increased wage, but with how to read the ordinance’s many definitions and exceptions. In the coming months we expect to see rule making and legal challenges that will hopefully clarify the impacts of the ordinance, so stay tuned. This blog post addresses a few of the questions we’ve been hearing so far.

Is hotel rebranding the latest 2014 trend? Claire Hawkins, Chair of Garvey Schubert Barer's Intellectual Property Practice and new author to Duff on Hospitality, weighs in on the topic and offers her insights on the intellectual property elements you'll need to consider. Thank you for today's post, Claire! - Greg

The hospitality industry regularly faces tremendous challenges, ranging from unexpected tornadoes to salmonella lurking in organic eggs requested by guests. However, negative reviews on TripAdvisor.com or similar sites pose particularly perplexing challenges. Should the business respond or ignore them? Our newest post discusses the latest legal developments regarding negative on-line reviews. – Greg 

I’m pleased to introduce guest author Sam Engel, from BrandVerity. BrandVerity provides services that detect online brand and trademark abuse for a variety of industries including hospitality. Sam spoke recently to members of our Hospitality, Travel and Tourism team at our monthly meeting. We’re grateful that Sam has offered to now share his experience and knowledge with our readers. Welcome, Sam, and thank you for today’s post. – Greg

Today’s blog post was contributed by Garvey Schubert Barer’s D.C. attorney and member of the firm's China Practice, Richard Gluck, based on original research by GSB’s Yi Zhang. His extensive knowledge of international business and collaboration between the U.S. and China is a great resource to the firm. We’re grateful to have him as a new author to the Duff on Hospitality blog. – Greg

As you may know, discrimination based on gender identity is unlawful in several states and many cities. This includes both the State of Washington and the City of Seattle. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has also taken the position that gender identity is protected under Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex.

While the antidiscrimination laws that protect transgendered individuals are not new, the subject of gender identity may be new to your managers. This post is intended to provide a very basic understanding of transgender issues to get employers off on the right foot for appropriately, sensitively, and lawfully handling gender expression issues in the workplace.

For those of you who attended, or even those of you who did not attend, below are the slides from my recent presentation in New Orleans at the Executive Vendor Summit. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

It is no secret that wage and hour class actions are among the “hot topic” law suits that are on the increase. Like too many people, when I hear “class action” my heart starts to race, beads of sweat break out on my forehead and I start to feel sick to my stomach…and I don’t even own the business that is named in the suit. I just know the wage and hour cases are time intensive and expensive to defend. Wage and hour class actions often deal with the tried and true wage claims, misclassification of exempt employees as well as the overtime claims that go hand in hand with the misclassification. However, occasionally one comes along that makes you stop and think.

On Monday March 3, 2014, a Multnomah County Circuit judge agreed with the Multnomah County Elections Director and brought a new hotel at the Oregon Convention Center one step closer to fruition. A Convention Center Hotel has long been desired by a variety of tourism and economic development interests who argue that such hotel will allow Portland to host larger events at the Convention Center. As long as those supporters have been around, so too have opponents of such a hotel, who argue that the economic benefits of such a hotel are overstated and may also harm their economic interests and should not qualify for public subsidies. In 2013, Metro and other local jurisdictions seemed to be coalescing around a plan that would bring the hotel to the Convention Center, but one aspect of the plan ran into a snag and ended up in court.

On February 5, 2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched the “WaterSense H2Otel” challenge, a program encouraging hotels to implement best management practices for reducing their water usage. As part of “WaterSense H2Otel,” the EPA is providing technical assistance using webinars and other forms of outreach including case studies on the “lessons learned” from other hotels’ efforts to reduce water usage. The challenge is designed for any individual hotel with five or more rooms, as well as hotel management groups and chains. EPA explains that WaterSense H2Otel is part of the agency’s broader (multi-sector) “WaterSense” program to promote water-efficient products, services and practices in an effort to address ever increasing demand for water in the U.S.