San Antonio City Council approved a Paid Sick Leave Ordinance on Thursday, August 16, 2018, which allows workers to accrue up to 64 hours of paid sick leave each year. This law largely tracks the recent Austin sick pay...more
Protecting your trade secrets and proprietary information is a vital part of your business. Every company needs to have policies and agreements in place to prevent employees from stealing property, and wrongfully soliciting...more
8/9/2018
/ Confidentiality Agreements ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employment Contract ,
Employment Policies ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Misappropriation ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Proprietary Information ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Risk Management ,
Trade Secrets
Many pollsters are predicting Congress could switch from Republican to Democratic control in November. It has been quite some time since we have seen any significant employment legislation from the Congress, but a newly...more
One of the benefits of the recent #Metoo movement is that companies in every industry are rethinking not only employment policies, but their approach to training and organizational culture. I was recently interviewed for an...more
3/19/2018
/ Anti-Harassment Policies ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Corporate Culture ,
Employee Training ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Harassment ,
Hostile Environment ,
Risk Management ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Title VII
The #MeToo movement started as a wave of press coverage exposing long-suppressed stories of sexual harassment and exploitation in Hollywood. That movement, however, has now gone far beyond Harvey Weinstein. ...more
2/5/2018
/ Anti-Harassment Policies ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Corporate Culture ,
Employee Training ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Harassment ,
Hostile Environment ,
Internal Investigations ,
Risk Management ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Title VII ,
Tone At The Top
Just like the infamous line that Congress had to pass the Affordable Care Act to know what was in it, it seems we had to pass the new tax law to find out all of the hidden surprises. One item that received little publicity...more
It’s that time of year again. You know the one. Supervisors hurriedly completing performance evaluations at the last minute to avoid nasty emails from the HR Department about missed deadlines. Sound familiar? If so, your...more
The Harvey Weinstein case has brought a spotlight to a problem that has plagued not only Hollywood but other professions as well. While Corporate America has largely cleaned up its act and instituted robust anti-harassment...more
On July 26, the Dept. of Labor (DOL) published a Request for Information (RFI), looking for input from the public on next steps after the Obama Administration’s effort to increase the minimum salary threshold for exempt...more
With the first tropical storm of the season bearing down on the Gulf Coast, it is a good time to dust off your HR Department’s Hurricane Plan and make sure it is up to date. If you don’t have one, it is an even better time to...more
Comp time has long been available to public sector employees, but never for private companies. That might be changing soon.
On May 2, the House passed the Working Families Flexibility Act. This bill would amend the Fair...more
Comp time has long been available to public sector employees, but never for private companies. That might be changing soon.
On May 2, the House passed the Working Families Flexibility Act. This bill would amend the Fair...more
This week, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit became the first Federal Court of Appeals to hold that discrimination based on sexual orientation is actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This decision...more
President Trump has only been in office a little over a month, but one thing is clear. He intends to do what he said he would do on the campaign trail, especially in regard to immigration. What does that mean for employers?...more
3/2/2017
/ DACA ,
E-Verify ,
Executive Orders ,
Foreign Nationals ,
Form I-9 ,
Green Cards ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Immigrants ,
Immigration Procedures ,
Immigration Reform ,
Popular ,
Refugees ,
Terrorist Threats ,
Travel Ban ,
Trump Administration ,
Visas
Activist NLRB Created More Problems For All Employers in 2016 - What Happens Under President Trump?
During 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the Board) maintained its generally pro-union, anti-employer...more
1/12/2017
/ 21st Century Cures Initiative ,
Affordable Care Act ,
Ambush Election Rules ,
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Anti-Retaliation Provisions ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Arbitration ,
Asset Seizure ,
Ban the Box ,
Blacklist ,
Browning-Ferris Industries of California Inc. ,
Criminal Investigations ,
DACA ,
Decriminalization of Marijuana ,
Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Dream Act ,
E-Verify ,
EB-5 ,
EB-5 Regional Centers ,
Educational Institutions ,
EEO-1 ,
Email Policies ,
Employee Definition ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employee Restrooms ,
Employees ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces ,
Federal Contractors ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Foreign Workers ,
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination ,
Gig Economy ,
Graduate Students ,
H-1B ,
Healthcare ,
Hospitals ,
HRA ,
Immigrants ,
Immigration Reform ,
Independent Contractors ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Joint Employers ,
Management Rights Clauses ,
Marijuana ,
Medical Marijuana ,
Mexico ,
Minimum Salary ,
Minimum Wage ,
Misclassification ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Obama Administration ,
OFCCP ,
Over-Time ,
Pay Transparency ,
Persuader Rules ,
Protected Activity ,
Right to Strike ,
Section 7 ,
Sick Leave ,
Small Business ,
Staffing Agencies ,
Teaching Assistants ,
Trump Administration ,
Unions ,
USCIS ,
Wage and Hour ,
Whistleblower Protection Policies ,
Whistleblowers ,
White-Collar Exemptions ,
Witness Statements
Ban the Box, living wage, sick pay, and legalized marijuana. These laws are at the cutting edge of employment law, and they are all legislative efforts at the state and city level. With a Republican Congress since 2010, new...more
The enforceability of employee restrictions on competition has traditionally been up the states, with some, like California, largely banning such agreements, while others, like Texas, allowing them with reasonable...more
Large government contractors on Monday received a reprieve, at least preliminarily, from the implementation of the U.S. Department of Labor’s so-called “blacklisting” rules, under which covered contractors (including...more
10/27/2016
/ Arbitration Agreements ,
Blacklist ,
Covered Entities ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces ,
Independent Contractors ,
Labor Law Violations ,
Over-Time ,
Paycheck Transparency ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Subcontracts ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
You can add anti-trust laws to the long list of legal risks that must now be managed by corporate HR departments. According to a recent guidance document prepared by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice,...more
This year, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced new regulations that would double the minimum threshold for a salaried employee exempt from overtime from $455 per week to $913 per week (or $47,476). The regulations also...more
10/5/2016
/ Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Final Rules ,
Minimum Salary ,
Non-Exempt Employees ,
Over-Time ,
Proposed Legislation ,
U.S. House ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
Texas and many other states in the South have passed state laws in recent years restricting employers from terminating employees who keep their lawfully-licensed concealed handgun locked in their vehicle. For the most part,...more
8/11/2016
/ Appeals ,
At-Will Employment ,
Concealed Weapons ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employer No-Weapons Policies ,
Firearms ,
Gun Laws ,
Guns-in-Trunks Legislation ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Public Policy ,
Reversal ,
Wrongful Termination
The latest craze is Pokémon Go, an app for smartphones that allows people to “catch” Pokémon creatures by integrating the real world with the virtual world. So what do you do if you see one of your employees wandering around...more
One of the few concessions made by the Department of Labor (DOL) to employers in the new overtime regulations is permission to count non-discretionary incentive payments towards the minimum salary threshold for exempt...more
This week the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released final regulations regarding the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) executive, administrative and professional overtime exemptions, also known as the “white collar”...more
With a stroke of the pen, President Obama signed into law the first-ever federal trade secrets regime, opening federal courthouse doors to all trade secrets litigants. While federal subject matter jurisdiction is widely...more