Late in the evening on May 28th, the Houston City Council passed a city ordinance that prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or trans-gender status. The ordinance also prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, sex…
Blog Archives
IRS Says It Will Penalize Employers Dumping Employees into Obamacare
Before the ink on the Affordable Care Act was dry, prudent employers were analyzing the law to identify ways to save money and avoid many of the punitive aspects of the law. One question which has repeatedly been asked of…
Tagged with: ACA, Healthcare, IRS, Obamacare
Posted in Federal Government, Healthcare Reform, Labor & Employment, Wage and Hour
Posted in Federal Government, Healthcare Reform, Labor & Employment, Wage and Hour
NLRB Cracking Down on No-Taping Policies
It is well-established that the NLRB has been aggressively litigating cases involving social media policies and employees terminated for making disparaging comments online. Recently, however, the NLRB has expanded its reach even further into employee handbooks and have staked out…
Can an Employee Accept a Severance Payment and Still File a Discrimination Claim?
According to the EEOC, the answer to that question is not only “Yes,” but that any severance agreement which limits the employee’s right to file a charge of discrimination is unenforceable and illegal. This week, the EEOC filed suit against…
New Texas Supreme Court Case Helps/Hurts At-Will Status
On April 25, 2014, the Texas Supreme Court issued a decision in the Sawyer, et al. v. Du Pont case, which can be found here. The case involved questions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the scope of…
Houston Mayor Proposes City Ordinance on Sexual Orientation Discrimination
Houston is one of the few major cities in the country without a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Neither federal nor Texas law includes such a protected category, however, other Texas cities such as Austin and…
President Obama Targets Equal Pay
On April 8, President Obama issued two executive orders which will impact employers who do business with the federal government. First, the President made it unlawful for contractors to retaliate against employees who discuss their pay. Second, the President ordered the…
Tagged with: Department of Labor, DOL, NLRB
Posted in Discrimination, Federal Government, Labor & Employment, Wage and Hour
Posted in Discrimination, Federal Government, Labor & Employment, Wage and Hour
Congress Passes Rare Bipartisan Amendment to Obamacare
There is not a lot that Democrats and Republicans can agree on with respect to Obamacare, but on April 1, 2014 the President signed into law a Medicare bill which had a provision tucked inside that will bring some important…
Cozen Issues Labor Alert on NLRB Approving Unionization of College Athletes
As a follow up to the previous blog post, my firm Cozen O’Connor has issued a Labor Alert on the recent news story involving the NLRB allowing college football players to unionize. The full alert can be found here. About…
Posted in Uncategorized
NLRB Rules that College Football Players Can Unionize
Under the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has taken some radical positions, but its newest decision makes clear that all bets are off in the second term. The Regional Director of the NLRB office in Chicago ruled…
