Walter Olson of the great Overlawyered.com sent a challenge over Twitter earlier this week:

For those of you who don't know Mr. Olson, he's a libertarian.  :-)

I have to admit, I needed time to process this! I complain about these laws all the time, but would I really want to get rid of all protections for employees who want to organize, be paid a fair wage, avoid being thrown out on the street ...

ATTENTION, employers in New York! In January, Anjie Cabrera and Stephen Stecker did a comprehensive report on a number of new laws that had recently taken effect or would soon be taking effect in New York State and New York City. Among those was a New York State regulation that was due to take effect March 7, which imposed restrictions on payment of wages by direct deposit or payroll ...

The February edition of ConstangyTV's Close-Up on Workplace Law is now available.

Host Leigh Tyson interviews Susan Bassford Wilson, co-chair of our e-Law Practice Groups about the risks associated with "Bring Your Own Device" policies and what employers can do to minimize those risks.

You can watch it on our YouTube channel. Silly me - what was I thinking? It's right here, too ...

The employment law week in Trumpland started out a little slow, but now we're back in business.

Acosta looking good for confirmation as Secretary of Labor. In contrast to nominee Andrew Puzder, the outlook appears good for his successor nominee Alexander Acosta. Mr. Acosta seems to have bipartisan support in the Senate, and has even been endorsed by the International Union of ...

Although the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has not announced a requirement that contractors update their Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision, the agency has updated its required posters and language.  Links to the new versions can be found here (formatted) and here (unformatted).

The new versions do not contain substantive changes; they merely ...

This should have been an open-and-shut case. For the employer, that is, not the employee.

Lufkin Industries, Inc., had an employee, William Fisher, who was a 55-year-old African-American. One day, Mr. Fisher got into a verbal tiff with his 31-year-old white supervisor, and the supervisor called him "Boy." Mr. Fisher was offended and complained to the company's vice president of Human ...

Yikes. I hope I haven't missed anybody. Wild week!

We hope that the immigrant strikes are about over by now, but they may continue into today, and a women's strike is reportedly set for March 8. Do employers have any recourse when their employees go out on strike? It depends. If the strike is "protected concerted activity" (and it may be), then employers will need to tread carefully and ...

President Trump's new nominee for Secretary of Labor is R. Alexander Acosta, dean of the law school of Florida International University in Miami. Before he became a law school dean, Mr. Acosta's experience included heading the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush. He was also a member of the National Labor Relations Board for about eight ...

Bloomberg BNA reports this afternoon that Andrew Puzder, President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Labor, IS going to withdraw from consideration. Please stay tuned! UPDATE (4:12 p.m. EST): It's now official.

(PS - I nominate Victoria Lipnic to take his place.)

As we have previously reported, the new EEO-1 Form is set to be used as of March 31, 2018, for the October-December "snapshot" period in 2017. The new form will require federal contractors and employers with 100 or more employees to provide summary compensation data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in each EEO-1 category, divided into 12 "pay bands," and classified by ...

The confirmation hearing for Andrew Puzder, President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Labor, is supposed to take place tomorrow. While we wait to see what happens, I thought it might be fun to open a comment thread so we can opine about the issues that have been raised against him. Do you think they're legitimate? Do you think he's a good choice for Secretary of Labor, or a ...

This time of year, I am a total bleeding heart.

Unlike most of my fellow employment law bloggers, I love Valentine's Day, and I don't have much of a problem with consensual workplace relationships between unmarried people. People spend most of their lives at work, and so I can see how they might (1) have limited relationship options outside the workplace, and (2) easily develop an ...

Yesterday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the Trump Administration's motion to stay the temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge in Seattle. This means that the TRO, which blocks the temporary travel ban from taking effect, will remain in place. The Administration may seek review by all of the judges on the Ninth Circuit or by the U.S. Supreme ...

On January 31, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs announced that the voluntary self-identification form for individuals with disabilities has been renewed through 2020. The renewed form remains the same with the exception of the new expiration date of January 31, 2020. Federal contractors should begin to use the renewed form or update their electronic versions ...

*EDITOR'S NOTE: This "daily" stuff has now officially become "more or less -- maybe once a week, anyway."

For background on the immigration issue, please see this bulletin and this follow-up, both by Will Krasnow and Jeanette Phelan of our Immigration Practice Group. The oral argument before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will take place by ...

The State of Missouri has now become our 28th right-to-work state, following closely after Kentucky, which took the leap about a month ago.

The Missouri bill was signed into law yesterday by Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, and is scheduled to take effect in August. However, the Missouri AFL-CIO has requested a voter referendum on the measure. If the union gets enough signatures, the ...

A jury socked it to a Wisconsin employer last year in a Family and Medical Leave Act case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed.

Well, I take that back. The Seventh Circuit didn't affirm completely -- no, it ordered the trial court to give the plaintiff more in attorneys' fees than she had already won.

Check it out:

Tracy Wink was a clerical employee for ...

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives voted to permanently block implementation of the Fair Pay & Safe Workplaces Rule, also known as the contractor “Blacklisting Rule.” With a 236-187 vote, the joint resolution disapproving the Rule easily passed in the House and will now head to the Senate.

As we discussed earlier this week, Congress can use the Congressional Review Act ...

Our new president has us all hopping . . .

Andrew Puzder's advocacy for franchises makes him a target. Dan Murphy and Jeff Rosin from our Franchise Industry Group talk about the Puzder nomination (he's President Trump's choice for Secretary of Labor) and the groups seeking to block his confirmation. As we've noted a couple of times this week, Mr. Puzder's confirmation hearing, most ...

President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch is still looking good to me. I've now read his famous (among law nerds, anyway) concurrence in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, in which he criticizes the Chevron doctrine. (Judge Gorsuch also wrote the majority opinion in Gutierrez-Brizuela, but his concurrence starts at pdf page 15.)

The Chevron doctrine, from a 1984 U.S ...

It's Neil Gorsuch! President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court was Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. If you watched the announcement on TV last night, you already know about his impressive credentials. If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch will fill the vacancy created by the death last year of Justice Antonin Scalia, and he'll be the first Supreme Court ...

In good news for federal contractors, Congress has taken its first step toward permanently blocking implementation of the Fair Pay & Safe Workplaces Rule, also known as the contractor “Blacklisting” Rule.  As we have discussed previously, the Rule (which includes regulations and guidance implementing President Obama’s Executive Order 13673) requires ...