by George Miller
On September 23, 2009, the House Labor Committee opened hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (H.R. 3017), otherwise referred to as ENDA. ENDA is sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D – MA) and has been introduced in previous sessions of Congress. ENDA would prohibit employment discrimination, preferential ...
By Debra H. Dawahare
Every experienced litigator knows that retaliation cases are hard to win, and Kentucky’s Court of Appeals may recently have made the challenge even greater. In Colorama, Inc. v Marty Johnson, a published opinion dated September 4, 2009, the Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed the Floyd Circuit Court’s decision that ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On September 15, 2009, the Washington Post reported that Pennsylvania Democratic Senator Arlen Specter in a speech to the AFL-CIO convention stated that by year’s end the Congress would pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in a form that would be “totally satisfactory to labor.” While dropping the card check feature in ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
The Princeton, New Jersey-based Gallup Poll on September 3, 2009, released the results of its pre-Labor Day poll regarding the popularity of unions in America. It’s bottom line finding is that “[w]hile 66% of Americans continue to believe unions are beneficial to their own members, a slight majority now say unions hurt the ...
By Erin Brisbay McMahon
If your company is an employer with a self-insured health plan, sweeping new data breach notification regulations issued on August 24, 2009 will impact your company, as well as companies that need to use the health information of your employees to render services to the plan (e.g., third-party administrators). The ...
By George Miller
On August 12, 2009, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission posted on its website a Notice Concerning the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The Notice states in part that, “. . . each paycheck that delivers discriminatory compensation is a wrong actionable under the federal EEO statutes, regardless of when the ...
By George Miller
On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (“Act”), which addresses the issue of discrimination in compensation. The Act amends Title VII, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the federal Rehabilitation Act, to state that, “. . . a ...
By Kristie Alfred Daugherty
On August 14, 2009, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky handed down a decision in the case of Welsh v. Phoenix Transportation Services, LLC, No. 2007-CA-001231, 2009 WL 2475206 (Ky. App. Aug. 14, 2009), holding that absent an affirmative request by the employer for an employee to violate the law, the employee’s ...
By Glen Krebs
In October 2007 Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California enjoined the implementation of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule regarding safe harbor procedures for employers who receive a No-Match letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA). On August 19, 2009, DHS issued a notice in the Federal ...