Education Update - October 2011, No. 4

In This Issue:

- Is The “Post” Man Coming To Your School? By William Blackie (Cleveland)

Imagine that on November 14, 2011, as the Director of the St. James Interdenominational Faith Academy, one of the school’s teachers comes into your office and informs you that unless the school immediately posts the National Labor Relations Board notice advising employees of their rights, including the right to form a union and bargain over their wages and other terms of employment, he will file a complaint with the NLRB forcing you to post it and also seek to have the NLRB impose the full penalties allowed by law. You have never heard of such a notice. Is it really required? The school has no union and isn’t the NLRB only concerned with unions? Aren’t religious schools exempt from such laws? What do you do? Where do you begin?

- Get A Passing Grade When Employing H-1B Teachers By Kim Kiel Thompson and Shanon R. Stevenson (Atlanta)

Employers of foreign teachers learned some hard lessons this year about following the rules for H-1B visa holders. In March, the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division (WHD) assessed over $1.7 million in civil money penalties and ordered the payment of over $4.2 million in back wages against Maryland’s Prince George’s County Public Schools system for illegally reducing the wages of 1,044 foreign H-1B teachers when it required the teachers to pay H-1B filing fees....