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:  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 ...