Labor & Employment Law Update

EEO-1 report filers should prepare to submit Component 2 pay data for both calendar years 2017 and 2018 by September 30, 2019. As we previously reported, the U.S. District Court for the District Court of Columbia previously ruled that employers must submit pay data for calendar year 2018 by September 30, 2019. In this ruling, the court also presented the EEOC with the option to either collect pay data for calendar year 2017 or calendar year 2019. The EEOC recently announced that it will collect pay data for calendar year 2017. Pay data for both 2017 and 2018 will be due September 30 ...

In an effort to try and help root out discrimination, the Illinois legislature has followed California’s top-down approach of regulating the boardroom to ensure that decision makers include historically disenfranchised classes.

On March 29, 2019, the Illinois House sent HB 3394 to the Senate.  HB 3394 is modeled after California Corporations Code § 301.3, which requires publically held corporations (domestic and foreign corporations that list their outstanding shares on a major U.S. Stock Exchange), which state on their SEC Form 10-K that the principal executive ...

In only the latest of potential blows to companies that collect or use biometric data, an Illinois Appellate Court has ruled that claims brought by employees of the Four Seasons luxury hotel for alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) are not subject to arbitration under the workers’ respective employment agreements with the hotel. Liu v. Four Seasons Hotel, Ltd., 2019 IL App (1st) 182645.

The BIPA was enacted to protect the privacy of individuals’ biometric data. It governs the collection, use, safeguarding, handling, storage ...

On April 25, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that employers must submit pay data by September 30, 2019. For a more detailed background on the case at issue, National Women’s Law Center v. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), please see our blog from last month. As a brief background, years ago the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set out to collect pay data from employers in an effort to identify and address pay discrimination against women and minority workers. The EEOC already collects data from employers regarding the sex ...

Company sponsored volunteer activities foster a positive corporate culture and can improve employee engagement and morale. On March 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor issued an Opinion Letter that makes wage and hour compliance associated with corporate volunteer campaigns a bit easier. The Opinion Letter clarifies that employers are not required to pay non-exempt employees for volunteer time outside their normal work hours so long as participation is truly voluntary and the employer does not direct the volunteer activities. The DOL further confirmed that an employer ...

Having handled countless prevailing wage disputes, the local, state or federal administrative agency assigned to administer compliance (i.e. the US Department of Labor) is the only government entity that can lawfully determine whether a contractor is in violation of an applicable prevailing wage law and push for debarment.  Ultimately, a contractor who has been determined by a government agency to have violated its prevailing wage obligations (i.e. a clerical mistake, an accounting error, poor or missing paperwork) is a long way from getting on a “debarment list.” First, in ...

A currently pending federal case reminds us that hospitality employers could have claims for sexual harassment and discrimination brought against them based on the alleged inappropriate conduct of their customers. 

The case is Hashway v. Starbucks Corp. (D.R.I., No. 1:19-cv-00125), filed on March 11, 2019. The plaintiff is a former female Starbucks barista. The case arose from the alleged inappropriate conduct of a male customer. The claim was that the customer allegedly would routinely come to the store and stare at the employee, make lewd and inappropriate comments about ...

The United States Supreme Court announced today that it will consider whether Title VII protects workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation. To date, several federal appeals courts have reached different conclusions on this issue. In 2017, the Seventh Circuit was the first to rule that sexual orientation discrimination was a form of sexual discrimination. The Second and Sixth Circuits followed in 2018. But in 2017, the Eleventh Circuit reached the opposite conclusion. And earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed its long standing “binding precedent” ...

Like a majority of U.S. states, Illinois’ legal stance on marijuana is becoming more tolerant and liberal – with regard to both medical and recreational use (also called “adult use”). As we previously reported on November 6, 2018, the Alternatives to Opioids Act of 2018, PA 100-1114 amended Illinois’ Medical Cannabis Pilot Program to allow individual prescribed opioid medication to enroll in the Illinois Opioid Alternative Pilot Program (OAPP). The OAPP allows these individuals to seek relief through the legal use of medical cannabis, rather than opioid ...

As we previously noted in our February 12, 2019 blog, increases to the minimum wage in Illinois are on their way. And as we also noted, drastic increases in the damages for which Illinois employers may be liable in cases of minimum wage and overtime violations are now in effect. 

That said, there are a number of steps employers can take to minimize the risks of wage and hour lawsuits and liability, and they include the following:

• Train front line supervisors not to allow any off-the-clock work. Along with this training, employers must also make clear to all employees that they cannot work ...