Court strikes Obama-era DOL overtime rules

After issuing a preliminary injunction freezing the Obama-DOL overtime rules in 2016 before they took effect, the same court struck them on August 31, 2017 as unconstitutional, and in so doing expressly held the DOL had acted outside even Chevron authority. The decision, for now, seems to bring an end to the rules, as it seems unlikely the Trump-DOL will re-visit them.

Source: Nevada v. U.S. D.O.L., — F.Supp.3d —, case no. 4:16-cv-00731-ALM (D.E.D.Tex. 8/31/17).

Tenth Circuit reaffirms indefinite leave request is not a reasonable accommodation

The Tenth Circuit recently reaffirmed that a request for indefinite leave is not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Although the plaintiff provided some information about her need for leave, she failed to provide any sense of the anticipated duration of her disability. Instead she “informed her supervisor at Kelly on a Monday morning that she planned ‘not to come to work this week at all’ and indicated she would need additional time off for ‘some appointments and tests’ and for ‘five times of radiation.’” The Tenth Circuit held that was insufficient.

The accommodation Plaintiff requested would have required GE either to go without someone working at the receptionist position it had contracted with Kelly to staff (requiring others at GE to take over Plaintiff’s duties at the receptionist desk while still carrying out their own job duties), or to accept a supertemporary employee or employees who would fill in for Plaintiff for the week she wanted off and for whichever other additional times she needed to take off for tests, appointments, “times of radiation,” and other cancer-related reasons, while letting Plaintiff return to take over her temporary job position whenever she was free and felt up to attending work.

The case is a good reminder to employers of the value (and legal requirement under the ADA) of the interactive process. By communicating with the plaintiff and hearing her full request, the employer was able to gauge the legal reasonableness of her request under the ADA and determine it to be insufficient.

Source: Punt v. Kelly Services

Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) rejects EEOC’s revised EEO-1 Form

The OMB rejected the EEOC’s new EEO-1 form, which would have become effective March 31, 2018. The OMB reviews agency forms like this pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act and determined that the EEOC’s new EEO-1 had been unlawfully developed by the EEOC had underestimated the burden on employers it its published estimate. The PRA was enacted into law in 1980 and since then has required agencies to estimate the paperwork burden any new bureaucratic action would require. Here the OMB determined that the EEOC’s previously published estimate was simply, and significantly, too low. Specifically the new EEO-1 form would have required employers who are subject to EEO-1 reporting (typically employers of 100 or more) to report wage and hours worked for all employees by race, ethnicity and sex, all within 12 specified pay bands. The OMB determined that the public had not been properly apprised by the EEOC of the burdens such a requirement would entail.
The OMB’s ruling comes after much controversy over the new EEO-1 form. Commentators criticized the EEOC’s approach not only as being overly burdensome but also as overly simplistic. Commentators noted it would have created the impression that workers within the same pay bands should be paid the same amounts (irrespective of their gender, race, etc.) despite the fact that they may work in very different positions within those bands. Likewise it has been noted that the EEOC’s approach overly simplified compensation practices by not properly allowing for articulation of base wages versus bonuses, commissions, overtime and non-wage benefits that form part of a compensation package.
Although a part of the White House, the OMB is often seen as a non-partisan watch dog.
The OMB’s ruling leaves the EEOC’s proposed EEO-1 for 2018 dead in the water. The OMB has invited the EEOC to continue the OMB’s examination of the proposed EEO-1 form if it believes the form defensible. The OMB has also noted the EEOC’s prior EEO-1 would be acceptable for use. The EEOC has announced it is considering its options. Employers must wait for the EEOC’s decision to determine what form to use in the future.
Source: OMB Memoradum re EEO-1 Form, Review and Stay (8/29/17)

Bill Berger – L2S Legal, LLC – Best Lawyers in America

Honored to have been selected again for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America: Employment Law – Management!

Pre-Trump NLRB scores post-Trump win at D.C. Circuit

In 2011, the NLRB announced, in Specialty Healthcare, that a union can ask to represent only some of a company’s workers. This so-called “micro-unit” approach has been heavily criticized as permitting unions to cherry-pick a group of pro-union workers within a group of workers who otherwise would vote “No” on having a union. It has been seen as a way for a union to slide its nose into a group that would otherwise want nothing to do with that union. It has further been criticized as a bureaucratic change announced by the Board with no support in the language of the National Labor Relations Act and in direct contradiction of decades of precedent.

Despite that criticism, the D.C. Circuit recently held for the Board, ruling that the Board’s new “micro-unit” approach is within the existing language of the NLRA and was therefore a lawful approach available to the Board. Under this micro-unit approach, an employer can only defeat a union’s attempt — can only require that the vote be held among all the workers in a unit — by showing that the smaller group is “truly inappropriate” and specifically that the workers deserve a vote because they share “an overwhelming community of interest.”

The decision is most likely to face its next hurdle, which is likely to be an insurmountable hurdle, if and when a the next micro-unit case comes before the Board on review. Likely within the next few months, the Trump Administration will have seated its nominees to the Board. If a pre-Trump Board was able to reverse course and adopt micro-units, a post-Trump/Republican-majority Board is able and widely expected to reject micro-units and return Board law to pre-Specialty Healthcare.

Source: Rhino Northwest, LLC v. NLRB

Employer may share in tips if it does not claim a tip credit, at least in Tenth Circuit

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the country’s leading wage-hour law. Among other things, FLSA imposes a federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is a baseline; states and local governments are free to adopt higher minimum wages. Employers can, even under federal law, pay tipped employees a lower minimum wage if certain conditions are met. One condition is that the employer not share in the tips. To put it (overly) simply), tips can be pooled among other tipped employees, but not with the company or management.

What if the employer decides it wants the tips and doesn’t care about claiming the tip credit? In other words, can a company take some or all of the tips so long as it pays the full applicable minimum wage? The Tenth Circuit read the law and held, yes, in Marlow v. The New Food Guy, Inc., 861 F.3d 1157 (10th cir. 2017) (Employer that does not claim tip credit may take share of tips; FLSA’s prohibition against same is merely a condition for claiming a tip credit). The U.S. Department of Labor and Ninth Circuit say otherwise. See Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Assoc. v. Perez, 816 F.3d 1080 (9th Cir. 2016) (Employer may not whether or not a tip credit is claimed).

While the Tenth Circuit’s opinion is clear, well reasoned and based on the language of FLSA, employers outside the Tenth Circuit should be aware of the distinction in the event they wish to share in tips.

Colorado legislative employment law update 2017

The Colorado legislature has closed out its 2017 session. This year’s crop of new employment laws was relatively mild. Highlights included the following:

  • HB17-1214 enhances the Colorado Office of Economic Development’s ability to facilitate employee ownership of existing business. As owners of many business find themselves wanting to retire from their businesses,  the legislature hopes COED will now be better able to help employees to take over ownership.
  • SB17-189 provides employers who need to do background checks involving fingerprints more options than the law enforcement agencies previously permitted.
  • HB17-1021 provides that the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment can release to the public information about employers who have violated state wage laws, but continues to prohibit CDOLE from releasing a company’s trade secrets. Before disclosing information about a company, CDOLE will now provide the employer 20-day notice, allowing it time to object if it believes any information to be disclosed is a trade secret.
  • HB17-1269 expands the reach of preexisting law, which (like the federal National Labor Relations Act) prohibited employers from in turn prohibiting their workers from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions. This bill expands that state law beyond the NLRA to cover even employers who are not subject to the NLRA.
  • HB17-1119 enhances the penalties employers face if they fail to obtain workers compensation coverage for their employees.
  • HB17-1229 fleshes out Colorado’s workers compensation law in regard to mental impairment. It confirms that mental impairment is usually not a recoverable injury, especially when it is the consequence of aspects of the employment relationship, including discharge and discipline. However, workers compensation benefits may be available the mental impairment suffered as a result of a work-related traumatic event.

Failed legislation included the following:

  • HB17-1305 would have brought ban-the-box to Colorado. Ban-the-box laws are being introduced across the country as a way to prohibit employers from asking about an applicant’s criminal history.
  • HB17-1001 would brought back parental leave for children’s academic events (so-called parent-teacher conference leave). In 2009, Colorado passed such a law, but it expired in September 2015 and hasn’t since been revived.

 

Court, not arbitrator, decides if class arbitration is available

Where employers have entered into pre-dispute arbitration agreements with their workers, who decides if the workers can force the company to arbitrate class claims: a judge or an arbitrator? The answer can often drive the entire case. If an arbitrator gets to decide the question, it means the case effectively goes to the arbitrator, even if just for that issue. An employer that entered into an arbitration agreement, which does not permit class actions, finds itself having to arbitrate a class action, or at least having to arbitrate whether it should have to arbitrate a class action.

This was the reasoning by the Eighth Circuit in a recent decision where it observed that sending the case to the arbitrator, if even for just that one issue, would mean “(t)he benefits of arbitration are substantially lessened in a class arbitration proceeding.” Accordingly, the court joined the Third, Fourth and Sixth Circuits, holding that judges in court should decide, as a threshold of any arbitration action, whether any given arbitration agreement permits class actions. This leaves the California Supreme Court the lone holdout for the more plaintiff-friendly position that would send the case to an arbitrator.

Source: Catamaran Corp. v Towncrest Pharmacy

Trouble for the NLRB’s joint employer doctrine? 

The NLRB famously expanded its joint employer doctrine in its 2015 Browning-Ferris decision. There, the Board effectively eliminated the requirement that a company have actual control to be a joint employer, in other words, it eliminated its decades old “direct and immediate” control requirement. Instead it can be enough now — at least according to the Board — if the company has “reserved” some form of control, that isn’t exercised, even if “indirect.” The Board’s ruling in Browning-Ferris is currently on appeal at the DC Circuit.

Unwilling to wait for a decision, Congress is considering a House Bill, the Save Local Business Act, that would jettison the NLRB’s “reserved” or “indirect” standard and reinstate the “direct and immediate” standard, not only for purposes of the NLRA (the federal labor law governing union relatioins) but also the FLSA (the federal wage-hour law).

Here the DC Circuit considered a slightly different aspect of the NLRB’s new joint employer doctrine (its “share or codetermine” standard). While the DC Circuit went out of its way to say it was expressing no opinion on the Browning-Ferris issue (“direct and immediate”), it held the Board had improperly laxened its “share or codetermine” caselaw, reversed and remanded the case to the Board to reconsider.

Source: NLRB v. CNN Am. Inc.

Labor and Employment Alert: Avoiding Traps in Terminations and Common Separation Agreement Pitfalls: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP

Some helpful tips here on separation agreements: Labor and Employment Alert: Avoiding Traps in Terminations and Common Separation Agreement Pitfalls: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP