Workforce Bulletin

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday®: This week, we examine how employers should address controversial employee social media activity, especially amid widespread social tension such as that seen after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

An employee’s off-duty conduct can be grounds for termination, but disciplining employees always carries some risk. Recent online discussions surrounding the public murder of Charlie Kirk have spurred firings across the nation, leaving employers exposed to backlash for their action or inaction.

In this episode of Employment Law This Week®, Epstein Becker Green attorney Kimberly C. Carter offers guidance on addressing employee social media activity, emphasizing the importance of clear, proactive policies to set expectations and outline consequences.

By: Evan Rosen and Adam C. Abrahms

Yesterday, in a 2-1 decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals became the second appellate court to issue a ruling that President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) were constitutionally invalid because they did not occur during an “intersession recess” of the United States Senate.  The case comes a few months after the D.C Circuit’s ruling in Noel Canning, which similarly held that the recess appointments were invalid.  The Third Circuit and D.C. Circuit decisions, taken together, call ...

It seems with each passing month the National Labor Relations Board or its Acting General Counsel opens yet another new front on its assault on non-union employers.  A trend has emerged which puts labor law in conflict with standard employment practices.  From hire, to control of the workplace and employer property, to the manner post-termination disputes are handled, the NLRB is directing employers to ignore conventional wisdom, and often times other legal mandates, to alter the way they deal with their employees.

Much attention has been given to the NLRB’s more direct pro-union ...

It is Employment Law 101 – employment in the United States is generally at-will.  Equally elementary to HR professionals and employment counsel is the use of a good, strong at-will policy and/or agreement.  So common is the use of at-will policies and agreements that you would be hard pressed to find an employment handbook or an employer that does not make some use of them.

Notwithstanding this universal use, the National Labor Relations Board is poised to target non-union employers which maintain at-will policies or agreements.  Although the NLRB has taken several steps to ease the ...

By:  Bill Milani, Susan Gross Sholinsky, Dean Silverberg,  Steve Swirsky, and Jennifer Goldman

EBG has prepared an Act Now Advisory on the NLRB’s recent stance on employment-at-will disclaimers, which are generally incorporated in employee handbooks. Two recent claims filed before the National Labor Relations Board in Arizona alleged that language used in employers handbooks regarding at-will employment (and how that arrangement could not be changed) were overly broad and could therefore chill employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

By:  William J. Milani and Anna Kolontyrsky

The New York Court of Appeals has rejected a wrongful discharge cause of action brought by a hedge fund compliance officer who claimed that he was terminated for questioning a series of personal stock trades by the company’s president.  Sullivan v. Harnisch, No. 82 (N.Y. May 8, 2012) (PDF)

Sullivan, who was the Chief Compliance Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the hedge fund, was terminated after confronting the hedge fund's president about stock trades that Sullivan believed ...

By:  John F. Fullerton III

The New York Court of Appeals recently upheld a jury verdict in favor of a brokerage firm employee who claimed that his employer breached an oral promise (and violated New York wage law) when it failed to pay him a guaranteed bonus of $175,000, to be paid at the end of his first year of employment.  The discussions with the hiring manager regarding compensation were not put in writing.  Nevertheless, the employee subsequently signed an acknowledgment in the formal employment application that  “compensation and benefits are at will and can be terminated, with or ...