Beginning on September 1, 2023, the Texas Labor Code will prohibit race discrimination on the basis of an employee’s hair texture or a protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race. Protected hairstyle includes braids, locks, and twists. Twenty states have pass similar laws commonly referred to as CROWN Acts. CROWN is an acronym for
A recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) concluded that standard nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions found in many employee severance agreements violate federal labor law because they have a reasonable tendency to interfere with and restrain employees’ prospective rights to engage in protected concerted activity, bargain collectively and form unions for their
On January 5, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announcing that it was proposing an administrative rule that would end the use of all noncompetition agreements in employment relationships outside the context of the sale of a business. The proposed rule, among other things, labels the following as unfair methods
Also included in the omnibus spending bill are expanded accommodations for women that need to express breast milk in the workplace. The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act or the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act expands the federal workplace protections for women with a need to express breast milk passed in 2010.
Yesterday, I was on a flight for a business trip and was writing a post about a few Artificial Intelligence applications I’ve been playing around with. But before I could publish my post, I was reminded that you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat Daniel Schwartz on a blog topic
President Biden recently signed the Speak Out Act, the latest in a set of bills focusing on workplace sexual harassment and sexual assault. According to the legislative findings of the Act, 81% of women and 43% of men have experienced some form of sexual harassment or sexual assault throughout their lifetime, one in three
On November 16, 2022, the Department of Labor announced that it had recovered $1.2 million in back wages from four different home health care agencies on behalf of 599 home healthcare workers. One of the responsible employers, Guardian Angels Care Services, Inc., owed $160,477 in overtime back wages for misclassifying its employees as independent
With the spectacular crash of the centralized cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the potential bankruptcy of a second high-profile cryptocurrency exchange called BlockFi, now is a good time to revisit whether an employer would want to pay or employees receives all or part of their wages in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.
Let’s go back to
Want to evaluate whether you need to improve your company’s sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies or get recommendations for potential improvements to those policies? A company can spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to engage a large law firm to study the company’s policies and make recommendations for improvement. Alternatively, a company
In a recent case out of a federal court in Houston, a former African American sales representative for FedEx received a jury verdict in the amount of $366M. In that case, Jennifer Harris claimed that she opposed racial discrimination and that she was retaliated against and terminated for engaging in her protected activity. She brought