Workforce Bulletin

By: Jeffrey M. Landes and Susan Gross Sholinsky

The presentation slides and the recording for the webinar - Creating and Maintaining a Lawful Internship Program - are now accessible for your viewing. If you would like to review, please contact Kiirsten Lederer to obtain instructions.

During this timely and important webinar, we discussed how to minimize both your organization's liability and the risk of wage and hour lawsuits. Specifically, participants walked away with answers to the following questions:

• What are the best practices for recruiting and hiring interns, and what ...

By Matthew S. Groban and Robert S. Groban, Jr.

The OCAHO has recently issued two Form I-9 enforcement decisions involving hospitality and construction industry employers that should be of interest to all our clients.

In United States v. Symmetric Solutions, Inc. d/b/a Minerva Indian Cuisine, 10 OCAHO no. 1209 (OCAHO February 6, 2014), an OCAHO Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") upheld a $77,000 fine imposed by Immigration Customs Enforcement ("ICE") against a restaurant in Alpharetta, Georgia ("Restaurant"), for Form I-9 violations. ICE claimed that the Restaurant failed to ...

By: Jeffrey M. Landes and Susan Gross Sholinsky

The presentation slides and the recording for the webinar - Creating and Maintaining a Lawful Internship Program - are now accessible for your viewing.  If you would like to review, please contact Kiirsten Lederer to obtain instructions. 

During this timely and important webinar, we discussed how to minimize both your organization's liability and the risk of wage and hour lawsuits. Specifically, participants walked away with answers to the following questions:

• What are the best practices for recruiting and hiring interns, and what ...

Our colleagues have a new post on the Retail Labor and Employment Law blog that will help many of our readers at this time of year: "Summer's Coming! How to Handle Unpaid Internships," by Jeffrey Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Nancy L. Gunzenhauser.

Our colleagues have a new post on the Retail Labor and Employment Law blog that will help many of our readers at this time of year: "Summer's Coming! How to Handle Unpaid Internships," by Jeffrey Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Nancy L. Gunzenhauser.

By Jeffrey Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Nancy L. Gunzenhauser

A hot topic for every summer – but particularly this summer – is the status of unpaid interns. You are probably aware that several wage and hour lawsuits have been brought regarding the employment status of unpaid interns, particularly in the entertainment and publishing industries. The theory behind these cases is that the interns in question don’t fall within the “trainee” exception to the definition of “employee” under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), as well as applicable ...

By John F. Fullerton III and Jason Kaufman

In its recent decision in Santoro v. Accenture Federal Services, LLC [pdf], the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has joined the Fifth Circuit [pdf] in narrowly interpreting the prohibition against predispute arbitration agreements in the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (“Dodd-Frank”) -- and employers can breathe a further sigh of relief.

Dodd-Frank amended the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) to, among other things, prohibit agreements requiring predispute arbitration of SOX claims (see 18 ...

Guest Post By Charles Diamond and Lynnann Whitbeck, Alvarez & Marsal

A substantial amount of litigation is being brought against companies, both public and private, because of “glass-ceilings” allegedly found within firms. More recently, the financial services industry has been a target of glass ceiling allegations and a number of other discriminatory employer practices against legally protected groups.  Nationally, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has implemented a Strategic Enforcement Plan through 2016 to reduce and deter ...

Our colleagues in the Immigration Law Group at Epstein Becker Green (Robert Groban Jr., Pierre Georges Bonnefil, Patrick Brady, Jang Hyuk Im, and Greta Ravitsky) have prepared a client alert regarding two rules that the Department of Homeland Security proposed on May 12, 2014.  If enacted, these rules would help the United States to attract and retain highly skilled workers.  Topics include:

• DHS Proposes to Issue Employment Authorization to Certain H-4 Spouses
• DHS Proposes to Enhance Flexibility for Highly Skilled Specialty Occupation Professionals

Read the full alert here. 

 

By John F. Fullerton

On April 29, 2014, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, Dr. David Michaels, recently testified before the Senate Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Employee and Workplace Safety to seek a number of changes to the whistleblower protection provisions of Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (“OSH Act”) so it would track provisions of other, more recent whistleblower protection laws.  Here is a link to Dr. Michael's testimony.

The provisions at issue are intended to protect employees from retaliation by their employers for ...