Labor & Employment Law Update

It’s that time of the year when college students will come knocking looking for a job or an internship. Depending on the nature of an organization’s business, an unpaid intern might be a great idea. But before organizations start engaging summer intern help, they need to make sure that they are complying with the Department of Labor (DOL) requirements, which include the following six factor test:

• The internship is similar to training that would be offered in an education environment;
• The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
• The internship is not ...

When a change of ownership occurs for a business that employs individuals who are represented by an incumbent union, the new owner must be aware of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) successor bar doctrine.  It used to be that following a sale or a merger of a business, there was a window of time during which employees, the new employer, or a rival union, could challenge a union’s majority status as representative of those employees. However, in 2011, the NLRB modified the doctrine in UGL-UNICCO Service Co., 357 NLRB No. 76 (Aug. 26, 2011), holding that for stability, the new ...

On April 13, 2017 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) set aside a vote defeating a union organizing campaign and ordered a new election because the workforce could have perceived management’s statements as impermissible promises to provide benefits if they voted down the union.

During a unionizing campaign, management held a meeting in which it advised employees that another facility’s employees received a 12% pay raise the pay period after they rejected union representation. Management explained that the raises were the result of a survey of wages in that ...

While the H-1B petitions submitted for the lottery this cap season were still in transit to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), both the USCIS and the Department of Labor (DOL) announced several measures aimed at detecting H-1B visa fraud and abuses.

1. Beginning April 3, 2017, USCIS is taking a more targeted approach when making site visits across the country to H-1B petitioners and the worksites of H-1B employees. The focus will be on the following: (1) cases where USCIS cannot validate an employer’s basic business information through commercially available ...

An OSHA investigation concluded on April 11, 2017 found that Atlantic Drain Service Company, Inc. failed to train its employees to recognize and avoid cave-in and collapse hazards, and failed to provide basic safeguards against trench collapse.  Two Atlantic Drain Company employees died on October 21, 2016 in Boston when a trench collapsed which ruptured an adjacent fire hydrant supply line filling the 12 foot deep trench with water in a matter of seconds.

In announcing $1,475,813 in proposed penalties for 18 willful, repeat, serious and other violations, OSHA determined that both ...

On April 4, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, held that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The seventh circuit decision is significant as the first of its kind. The United States Supreme Court has never ruled whether Title VII prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the seventh circuit, as well as the other United States Circuit Courts of Appeals had previously established a long line of precedent holding that claims ...

The “Cat’s Paw Theory” in discrimination cases is based upon a fable in which a clever monkey tricks an unwitting cat to pull chestnuts from a fire, so that the monkey can make off with the chestnuts without burning himself. Courts have applied the “cat’s paw theory” to hold employers liable for discrimination where the decision maker was not biased or based the decision on discriminatory animus, but was influenced by a supervisor or co-worker who was biased or took actions based on discriminatory intent. Just as the unsuspecting cat is left nursing his burnt paws in the ...