Texas Employment Law Update : Texas Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Russell D. Cawyer : Kelly Hart & Hallman Law Firm : Dallas TX Labor Updates

The mid-term elections are approaching.  Today I want to take the opportunity for a brief refresher on the Texas legal requirement for providing employee time off to vote.  Under certain circumstances, Texas employers may be required to give employees paid-time off to vote.  As I wrote about last year:

The Texas Election Code makes it a Class C misdemeanor for an employer to refuse to allow an employee to be absent from work on election day for purpose of attending the polls to vote.

An employer is not, however, required to allow time off to vote if the polls are open on election day for voting for two consecutive hours outside of the employee's working hours.  For example, if you have an employee that regularly works 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break, an employer may have to give that employee time off from work on election day to attend to the polls and vote. In Texas, the election polls are generally open from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. 

Because the term "penalty" means a loss or reduction in wages, an employer should provide paid time off for the employee to attend the polls to vote if the polls are not open on election day for at least two consecutive hours outside the employee's working hours.

An employer can avoid this interruption and the payment for otherwise nonworking time by rescheduling work schedules on election day so that employees have two consecutive hours off while the polls are open (e.g., reschedule the employee to work 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on election day). 

Consider yourself refreshed.

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Don Cruse at the Supreme Court of Texas Blog, wrote about the first case of the new term on which the Supreme Court of Texas requested full briefing --Hatton v. D.R. Horton, Inc.  that case involves an issue of significant importance to Texas employers.  According to Don, this case

concerns the enforceability of arbitration clauses in employee handbooks. In this case, the employer is alleged to have disclaimed any attempt to bind itself by the handbook, and stated that it reserved the right to change those terms unilaterally and without prior notice.

This is an issue that frequently comes up in Texas.  Employers occasionally include provisions in employee handbooks that purport to constitute binding agreements the employer may want to enforce.  Frequent examples include noncompetition and arbitration agreements.  The problem arises when the handbook also contains an express disclaimer provision stating that nothing the handbook constitutes a contract or other agreement and the employer reserves the right to amend the policies at any time.  Where the noncompetition or arbitration provisions of the handbook are not exempted from the disclaimer provisions, a party wanting to avoid the effect of those provisions, argues that no binding contract was created because the employer reserved the right to alter or amend the policy at any time.  Several Texas courts have refused to enforce arbitration agreements contained in employee handbooks because of the existence of broad disclaimer language.  The fact that the Court has requested full briefing does not mean that the Court will accept the case.   

In the meantime, employers and their counsel, should review their employee handbooks to ensure that broad disclaimers do not undermine important contractual agreements contained elsewhere in the employee handbooks that the employer intends to create and enforce.  You can follow the status of Hatton v. D.R. Horton, Inc. here.

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