This Littler Lightbulb highlights some of the more significant employment law developments at the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeal in the last month....more
On March 23, 2023, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) 41 providing relief for employers with airline cabin crew employees covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement (CBA) under the Federal Railway Labor Act and...more
Existing law requires an employer to provide an employee with a meal period during a work period of more than five hours per day, except as prescribed. However, on March 23, 2023, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) 41,...more
On March 20, 2023, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo released a new Memorandum, updating all Regional Directors, Officers-in-Charge and Resident Officers regarding which issues must be submitted to the NLRB Division of...more
The Paid Leave for All Workers Act, expected to be signed soon by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, would require nearly all covered Illinois employers to provide employees paid leave to be used for any purpose. Illinois would...more
The Illinois legislature kicked off the new year with the passage of Senate Bill 208 (SB208), also known as the Paid Leave for All Workers Act (the “Act”). Illinois Governor Pritzker issued a statement indicating his...more
Congress and POTUS Act to Avert National Freight Rail Shutdown. The national freight rail dispute that the Buzz had been tracking for months has come to the end of the line. Several holdout labor unions had refused to ratify...more
Both the House and Senate have passed legislation under the Railway Labor Act to avoid a railroad strike by imposing the bargaining agreement brokered by President Joe Biden in September 2022....more
President Joe Biden has asked Congress to step in and enact legislation in the hopes of preventing a nationwide railway strike. The move comes after four of 12 national railroad labor unions rejected a proposed bargaining...more
Only hours before 100,000 railroad workers across the United States were set to go on strike in September, President Biden announced that his administration had facilitated a tentative agreement to prevent the walk-off. For...more
On September 15, 2022, railroad companies and unions representing railway workers reached a tentative agreement to potentially prevent a strike that would have caused significant harm to the American supply chain and economy....more
Railroads are covered by the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), a piece of legislation that historically was the result of compromise between rail labor and rail management. One of the ostensible compromises in the RLA is that...more
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the federal agency that regulates rail safety, introduced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on July 28, 2022, that addresses the number of employees required to operate a train,...more
Respect for Marriage Act Advances. On July 20, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 267-157 to approve the Respect for Marriage Act (H.R. 8404). All Democrats and forty-seven Republicans voted in favor of the...more
Southwest Airlines Co. has filed a complaint for declaratory judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado challenging the application of the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA) to its...more
The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry recently released a set of Frequently Asked Questions to help clarify the Virginia Overtime Wage Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) on March 31. The Overtime...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The National Mediation Board’s new decertification rule survived the first round of legal challenge. In 2019, the NMB issued a final rule providing a direct decertification process under the Railway Labor...more
On February 2, 2021, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that affects all California employers that employ interstate transportation workers. In Ward v. United Airlines, the court held that federal law did...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Many employers have been dealing with threats of COVID-19 related work stoppages over the past several months. Whether such strike activity is subject to no-strike clauses under the National Labor...more
Ward v. United Airlines, Inc., 2020 WL 3495310 (Cal. S. Ct. 2020) - Plaintiffs are pilots and flight attendants for United Airlines, which is based outside California. Although they reside in California, they perform most...more
Most employers wrestling with COVID-19 related employment law issues aren’t paying much attention to the labor law issues arising out of the pandemic. Indeed, because most U.S. employers are non-union, many operate under the...more
I Love the Smell of Jet Fumes in the Morning. The smell of jet fumes permeated Washington, D.C., this week as senators scrambled to tie up some loose ends before heading home for the August recess. When Congress returns in...more
On July 26, 2019, the National Mediation Board (NMB) announced that it is amending its regulations to provide a straightforward procedure for the decertification of labor unions. ...more
The Legal 500 Adds Shook to Top Rankings in Cyber Law- The Legal 500 United States has again recognized Shook, Hardy & Bacon as one of the premier litigation firms in the country, giving top marks to a variety of practices,...more
On June 13, 2019, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Miller v. Southwest Airlines, Co., Case 18-3476 (June 13, 2019), ruled that claims asserted under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), in the...more