“Amid a flurry of fresh lateral moves among labor and employment lawyers, one of the leading L&E firms is facing a lawsuit tied to hires it made several years ago from an industry group that counts many of its clients as members,” report Arriana McLymore and Sara Merken in Reuters’ Employment.

“Law firms have been grabbing labor and employment lawyers at a fast clip the past several weeks, with hires at Blank Rome, Ogletree Deakins, Dentons and Kaufman, Dolowich & Voluck.”

Read the article.

Assistant Chief Mark Begley was awarded a $1.84 million lawsuit settlement against the County of Kaua‘i and Kaua‘i Police Department, reports Jason Blasco in The Garden Island.

“Begley was put on paid administrative leave in March 2012 when he filed a stress-based worker’s compensation claim, citing a hostile work environment. He was reinstated in June 2019.”

“In 2016, Begley initiated a federal lawsuit against the county, KPD and several senior officers, claiming that the now-retired KPD Chief Darryl Perry and his successor, former Acting Chief Michael Contrades, harassed and retaliated against him for reporting allegations that another assistant chief acted inappropriately toward a subordinate female officer.”

Read the article.

“After a routine compliance review by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), Locke Lord LLP – a federal contractor formerly known as Edwards Wildman – voluntarily entered into a conciliation agreement to resolve allegations of pay discrimination at its Providence, Rhode Island, office,” released the U.S. Department of Labor’s News Releases.

“In January 2015, Locke Lord LLP acquired Edwards Wildman. In fiscal years 2016 through 2020, Locke Lord LLP received payments totaling $4,915,638 due to federal contracts.”

“After a routine compliance evaluation, OFCCP alleged that Locke Lord LLP discriminated in its practice of issuing bonuses to 22 female associates. While not admitting the allegations, Locke Lord LLP agreed to provide relief for the affected associates totaling $150,000 in lost bonuses and interest, as well as assuring that all employees are afforded equal employment opportunities.”

Read the article.

Littler, the world’s largest employment and labor law practice representing management, has released its European Employer COVID-19 Survey Report, completed by more than 750 human resources executives and in-house counsel across Europe. The survey data provides insight into the pandemic’s impact on the future of the European workplace, particularly in the areas of remote work, employee wellbeing, vacation time and workforce reductions.

Remote Work

The sudden, deadly outbreak of COVID-19 forced many employers to adapt to a nearly universal remote workforce in a matter of days. In the wake of that abrupt shift, respondents expect the top long-term, positive implication on the workplace stemming from the pandemic will be a greater acceptance of the benefits of remote work. Further, 41 percent of employers surveyed say they are making or will make changes to their remote work policies to allow for more flexibility – as long as employees continue to demonstrate productivity while working from home.

In addition, 80 percent of respondents say they are requiring or considering requiring more employees to work remotely either somewhat or to a great extent. The reasons European employers say they are considering this shift include allowing for greater productivity of employees (41 percent), addressing the difficulty and cost of implementing new safety measures (38 percent) and allowing for the closure of offices (25 percent).

European employers’ attitudes toward remote work represent a contrast with their counterparts in the US. Littler’s COVID-19 Return to Work Survey Report, completed by US employers in May, found that only 30 percent planned to change policies to allow employees to continue working remotely in the long-term (compared to 41 percent in Europe). Rather, 52 percent of US employers surveyed said they would remain flexible regarding remote work only until the pandemic subsides, compared to the 34 percent of European respondents who indicated similarly.

Further, only 50 percent of American respondents reported requiring or considering requiring more employees to work remotely, compared to 80 percent of European respondents.

Employee Wellbeing

Across the corporate world, employers increasingly recognise the importance of addressing workplace mental health and wellbeing. Findings from Littler’s 2019 European Employer Survey provided support for this as respondents listed workplace mental health as their top concern, ranking it above sexual harassment and equal pay.

This year, most employers report taking at least some action to address their employees’ mental health and wellbeing during the pandemic. Fifty-seven percent of respondents have offered more flexible work schedules to accommodate employees’ personal needs, while 51 percent have solicited frequent feedback on their organisations’ pandemic response.

Vacation Time

Managing vacation time has also proven challenging for European employers. Thirty-four percent of respondents have begun to see an uptick in requests for time off, and the vacation requests are causing operational headaches for 82 percent of that group. As we move closer to the end of the year and more workers look to use remaining holiday time, those concerns are bound to grow.

Government Support and Workforce Reductions

At the start of the pandemic, several European governments implemented programs that allowed companies to keep employees on their payrolls by providing much of their base pay from a government fund. These wage subsidy programs helped prevent widespread job losses in the initial stage of the crisis, but critics argue that they only delayed inevitable workforce reductions and restructurings within struggling companies.

Of the survey respondents whose organisations did accept government support, 59 percent expect to implement reductions in staff when the program ends. Just 17 percent of respondents expect they can maintain their current workforce without government aid. Further, most employers surveyed expect the reductions to happen quickly – 63 percent say they would begin reductions as soon as the law allowed, before the government programs ended or within two weeks of their expiration. Only 10 percent say they would wait three months or longer.

The survey report covers a range of additional legal and HR matters impacting European companies, including issues specific to employers in the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

“As employees increasingly transition back into the physical workplace, employers have begun to grapple with whether and how to deploy COVID-19 diagnostic testing as a return-to-work solution. Many employers want to avoid extended employee quarantine or isolation requirements that prevent their employees from returning to the office for weeks and disrupt their operations. But is this potential solution legal? And is it effective?” ask Danielle M. Bereznay, Michael S. Arnold, Corbin Carter in Mintz’ Insights Center.

In this post they discuss practical considerations for employers to consider for a return to work COVID-19 testing strategy.

Read the post.

“Baker Donelson is imposing temporary pay cuts, reducing partner draws, and furloughing some employees because of the financial impact of the COVID-19 epidemic,” reports Debra Cassens Weiss in ABA Journal’s Latest News.

“Baker Donelson confirmed the measures in this statement provided to the ABA Journal: ‘We have undertaken a number of measures to ensure the financial stability of the firm moving forward, which includes shareholder reduction in draws and salary that have already been implemented,’ the statement said. ‘This will be followed over the next few weeks by temporary salary reductions across the firm and with a furloughing of some employees. … Our hope is that, once this crisis subsides, we will eventually be able to bring the furloughed team members back to Baker Donelson. Until then, we are providing them with support to help minimize the impact of what we know is an extremely trying situation, particularly in these highly uncertain times.'”

Read the article to find what other law firms are following suit by taking temporary measures in response to work slowdowns.

Read the article.

“It was major legal industry news last April when international business and legal services powerhouse EY entered into an agreement with Thomson Reuters to acquire Pangea3, the legal managed services business.” reports Robert J. Ambrogi in LawSite’s blog.

“Now, 10 months later, EY has laid off at least some of the U.S.-based lawyers who came with the deal.”

“While precise details remain uncertain, reports indicate that EY has let go some 20-30 lawyers who work for it in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota and the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas.”

Read the article.

“Coinbase Inc., a San Francisco-based digital currency exchange specializing in bitcoin transactions, has gone on an in-house hiring spree a little more than a year after recruiting former Fannie Mae general counsel Brian Brooks to serve as its chief legal officer.” reports Brian Baxter on Bloomberg Law’s Corporate Law News.

“Within the last three months Coinbase has brought on three more top in-house lawyers. One of those additions, former JPMorgan Chase & Co. assistant general counsel Rachel Nelson, was named in January to co-chair a new market integrity working group for the Blockchain Association, a trade association for the U.S. blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.”

“The additions by Coinbase come at the same time as a series of departures from Circle Internet Financial Ltd., a Boston-based blockchain payments company backed by The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Several in-house lawyers have left Circle since last summer amid a series of layoffs and divestitures by the company as it reshapes its business around stablecoins.”

Read the article.

Bankrupt coal company Blackjewel has agreed to pay roughly $5.1 million to cover back wages of more than 1,000 its Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia miners, reports The New York Times.

For two months this summer, out-of-work miners blocked a train full of coal from shipping out of an eastern Kentucky mine, demanding weeks of unpaid wages after their employer went bankrupt and shut down operations in the middle of an afternoon shift, writes the Times‘ Mihir Zaveri.

The company did not file a mandatory 60-day advance warning and did not post a bond, required by Kentucky law, to cover payroll. And workers did not receive pay for their last week on the job. Paychecks for two previous weeks bounced.

Read the  NY Times article.

Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies will pay a combination of almost $17 million to settle separate Labor Department allegations of pay bias based on gender and race, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Both Goldman Sachs and Dell-EMC agreed to nationwide ‘early resolution’ agreements, whereby their compliance will be routinely monitored in exchange for five years free of random OFCCP audits,” explains Bloomberg’s Paige Smith. “These are at least the fourth and fifth ‘early resolution’ agreements with the agency, joining those with Bank of America, Performance Food Group, Cintas Corp., and US Foods Inc. ”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Three recent court decisions raise a few issues to keep in mind for employers to keep in mind when drafting arbitration agreements for employees, according to a post on Bradley Arant Boult Cummings’ Labor & Employment Insights blog.

The authors, Bridget Warren and Anne R. Yuengert, discuss the common characteristics that an agreement should include.

They also advise drafters to include class and collective action waivers and how to update existing agreements to include such a waiver while a lawsuit is pending.

Finally, they advise paying attention to state laws that affect what can be included in the arbitration agreement.

Read the article.

Employers may not be aware that the National Labor Relations Board has issued an opinion holding that arbitration agreements that could be “reasonably construed” to prohibit an employee from filing unfair labor practice charges with the board are invalid under the National Labor Relations Act, warns a post from Foley & Lardner.

“What is significant about this unanimous employee-friendly decision is that even if the language in your arbitration agreement does not expressly prohibit the filing of an NLRB charge (or accessing the Board or its processes), you may not be safe from a determination that your agreement is invalid,” explains the author, Cristina Portela Solomon.

She lists three steps employers should take if they use arbitration agreements.

Read the article.

A recent case from the National Labor Relations Board shows that American labor law, including principles that apply to collective bargaining agreements, is not always as straight-forward as basic contract law, points out Barnes & Thornburg in a recent post.

The contract included a clause setting “longevity pay increases” for workers who reached certain tenure milestones with the company.

“The employer and union were meeting to negotiate a successor contract, and the agreement expired in the interim,” explains David J. Pryzbylski. “Once the labor agreement expired, the company ceased offering longevity pay increases on grounds that there was no agreement in effect that provided for such increases.”

The NLRB, however, found that a company generally must continue to offer employees the terms set forth under a collective bargaining agreement when it expires and while negotiations for a new contract are underway.

Read the article.

 The Dallas Morning News  reports that American Airlines is demanding that the mechanics’ unions pay for hundreds of flight delays and cancellations over the last two months.

“In a new court filing Tuesday, the Fort Worth-based carrier said it wants sanctions ‘sufficient to compensate American for losses caused’ from violations to a June 14 restraining order telling mechanics to cease work slowdowns to punish the company,” writes the News‘ Kyle Arnold.

U.S. District Judge John McBryde found that union maintenance workers conspired to slow down work by refusing overtime, taking more time on jobs and refusing off-site assignments. The unions have denied they slowed down work.

Read the  Morning News article.

Two recent court decisions dealing with mandatory arbitration agreements highlight why some manufacturers may gain by requiring pre-dispute employment arbitration agreements, writes Matthew Miklave for the Robinson+Cole Manufacturing Law Blog.

He discusses two federal court rulings favoring individual arbitration over litigation.

In one of the cases, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and found that a union labor contract which contained a clause requiring the arbitration of all disputes between the union represented employees and the employer prevented an employee from bringing an individual claim in federal court.

Read the article.

The 9th Circuit recently handed down an opinion that helps provide guidance to those employers trying to comply with collective bargaining agreements while simultaneously being challenged to apply potentially inconsistent definitions in California’s overtime law, writes Rebecca King for a Fisher & Phillips website post.

The case involved an offshore oil worker whose contract called for 12-hour shifts for a week and required him to be on the off platform between shifts. He wanted to be paid for the hours he was required to be on site.

Read the article.

A post on Foley & Lardner’s Labor & Employment Law Perspectives blog discusses negotiation styles for employers when the time comes for a new labor contract.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer as to what works best,” writes Thomas C. Pence. “Some people yell a lot and are very effective with it. Others try yelling and come off sounding cartoonish (never a good thing in negotiations). The best advice is to be true to yourself.”

Pence advises contract negotiators to be self-assured and determined in arguing their positions.

Read the article.

Christie Newkirk and Mark A. Shank have joined Diamond McCarthy LLP in Dallas and created the firm’s Labor & Employment Law Section.

The firm said Newkirk has more than 20 years’ experience representing employers and executives. Her work involves litigation, counseling, investigations, training, and representing executives.

Shank’s practice focuses on complex disputes, which he arbitrates, investigates, prosecutes, or defends as a neutral across the nation, according to the firm.

Read about the two lawyers.

Bloomberg reports that a vote on unionization by 2,700 United Airlines in-flight catering workers can proceed over the company’s objections, the general counsel of the National Mediation Board ruled.

The hospitality union Unite Here had filed a petition, with support from three-quarters of United’s kitchen workforce, seeking a vote, but the airline filed a complaint alleging fraud and misrepresentation by the union before the petition was filed, contending that Unite Here organizers had shown up at workers’ homes claiming to be representatives of the airline conducting a poll, reports Josh Eidelson.

Eidelson reports that “NMB General Counsel Mary Johnson wrote that after interviewing employees, the agency’s investigators had determined that ‘there is no evidence that employees did not understand that Unite Here was a union and was not a representative of United.'”

Read the Bloomberg article.

The Washington Post reports that  President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court may prove a crucial conservative vote in cases defining protections for gay and lesbian workers, the scope of union organizing and the rights of workers to take their grievances to court, according to labor law experts.

The president selected Brett M. Kavanaugh, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Reporter Jeff Stein quotes Benjamin Sachs, a labor law expert at Harvard University: “This last term was horrendous for workers. If you are to have imagined a nightmare scenario for workers and workers rights, this would be it. But in those cases, the ruling justices also planted seeds that could lead to further damage against workers.”

Read the Washington Post article.