Workforce Bulletin

As previously discussed, OSHA has been carefully scrutinizing the health care industry lately.  And on June 25, 2015, OSHA officially introduced a new compliance nightmare for the inpatient health care and nursing home industries by announcing the details of the agency’s new health care enforcement initiative in a memorandum from Dorothy Dougherty, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, to OSHA Regional Administrators and State Plans. The memorandum is entitled “Inspection Guidance for Inpatient Healthcare Settings” (“guidance ...

My colleague Nathaniel M. Glasser recently authored Epstein Becker Green’s Take 5 newsletter.   In this edition of Take 5, Nathaniel highlights five areas of enforcement that U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) continues to tout publicly and aggressively pursue.

1. Religious Discrimination and Accommodation—EEOC Is Victorious in New U.S. Supreme Court Ruling
2. Transgender Protections Under Title VII—EEOC Relies on Expanded Sex Discrimination Theories
3. Systemic Investigations and Litigation—EEOC Gives Priority to Enforcement Initiative

My colleague Nathaniel M. Glasser recently authored Epstein Becker Green’s Take 5 newsletter.   In this edition of Take 5, Nathaniel highlights five areas of enforcement that U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) continues to tout publicly and aggressively pursue.

1. Religious Discrimination and Accommodation—EEOC Is Victorious in New U.S. Supreme Court Ruling
2. Transgender Protections Under Title VII—EEOC Relies on Expanded Sex Discrimination Theories
3. Systemic Investigations and Litigation—EEOC Gives Priority to Enforcement Initiative

In a decision emphasizing the need for employers to focus on data security, on June 15, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by nine former employees of Sony Pictures Entertainment who allege the company’s negligence caused a massive data breach.  Corona v. Sony Pictures Entm’t, Inc., Case No. 2:14-cv-09600 (C.D. Ca. June 15, 2015).

In November 2014, Sony was the victim of a cyber-attack, which has widely been reported as perpetrated by North Korean hackers in relation for “The Interview,” a Sony comedy ...

Although OSHA’s new reporting rule has been in effect for almost seven months now, it has caused some major changes in the way that OSHA operates.  Since the new reporting rule went into effect on January 1, 2015, OSHA has received more than 5,000 reports of work-related deaths, inpatient hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye.  As OSHA anticipated, compliance with the rule has focused the agency’s attention on industries and hazards that it had not focused on before.  For example, because of the unexpectedly high number of reports of amputations from supermarkets ...

It is important for financial services employers to remember that the National Labor Relations Act protects their employees even when those employees are non-union, and that when groups of employees engage in discussions about their terms and conditions of employment via the employer’s email system, that conduct may constitute protected activity for which the employees may not be punished.  A recent example is highlighted by my colleague Nancy L. Gunzenhauser at Epstein Becker Green in a Management Memo blog post: “NLRB Dramatically Educates Private School on Meaning of ...