Labor & Employment Developments Blog

The always interesting LaborPains blog points out that big labor is (incredibly) trying to spin the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts as victory for labor unions. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its annual report on union membership for 2009 on January 22, 2010. 

A lot has been written recently about the new online labor market and several public policy issues related to it. 

Those of you who follow the world of sports may have noticed that NBA player Gilbert Arenas is in a bit of trouble for bringing several guns into Washington D.C., storing them in his locker and bringing them out or brandishing them depending on which media sources you believe.  For those of you who do not follow sports, Mr. Arenas plays professional basketball for the Washington Wizards, formerly known as the Washington Bullets [insert your own wisecrack]. 

The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation reports that union attorneys have filed 5 cases seeking to overturn the NLRB’s 2007 decision in Dana Corporation.  The Dana Corp. decision granted employees the right to file a decertification petition and force a secret ballot election within 45 days after an employer recognizes a union by card check. 

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday (12/9) in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., an anti-trust case.  The case is of interest to employment law practitioners because the issue under consideration is whether class arbitration may be imposed when that issue is not addressed in the parties’ arbitration clauses. 

When I attend holiday cocktail parties, people often ask me employment law questions.  They ask other questions as well, like why would someone invite a lawyer to a cocktail party — such dull company.  I can’t answer that one but here is a more topical question — what is the one best thing an employer can do to protect itself from disastrous employment litigation?  My answer is to start an arbitration program for your workplace.

Amazon has been hit with a FLSA lawsuit for unpaid overtime based on its practice of rounding employees’ clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest quarter hour.  As is typical, the newspaper account of the lawsuit quotes extensively from the complaint and leaves the impression that Amazon must have done something wrong.  In reality, there is nothing per se wrong with the practice or rounding hours. 

If you have turned on the television or radio, read a newspaper or looked at the internet in the past few days, you have probably heard about Tiger Woods’ car accident last Friday and the speculation about the circumstances surrounding the accident.  It is safe to assume that employees are discussing it and all the salacious speculation as well. 

Enemy of the State from 1998 is an action movie starring Will Smith.  By way of full disclosure, I saw this movie in a theater when it came out.