Summary of Program

The Labor and Employment Group at Weintraub Tobin is pleased to offer this very informative training session that will help business owners, human resource professionals, and managers to both comply with legal record keeping requirements and also prepare and maintain effective defensive documentation.

Most business owners know that customers and employees may need to be accommodated from time to time for various reasons. Often this is because of an employee’s disability, medical condition or a condition present on property owned by the business and open to the public. It is important for business owners and employers to understand and comply with how the courts and various federal and state regulatory agencies define accommodations, as well as learn what their rights and obligations are regarding: (1) engaging in the interactive process; (2) providing reasonable accommodations; and (3) removing barriers to access.

Program Highlights

This informative seminar will provide an overview of the many accommodations business owners, employers and Human Resources professionals may be forced to consider, who should be accommodated, and how to engage in an interactive process to determine an appropriate accommodation. Topics will include:

  • How to Determine Who is Entitled to an Accommodation
  • How to Engage in the Interactive Process and How to Know When to Initiate the Initial discussion
  • The Various Protected Classes and/or Activities Entitling an Employee to Accommodation (including things like disability, religion, and illiteracy, to name a few)
  • Service Animals in the Workplace
  • How to Effectively Document the Accommodation
  • Recent Developments in Accommodation Law
  • A primer on Title III “Public Accommodation” Liability
  • Disabled Access Cases
    • ADA Mills Are Still Active
    • How Alterations to Your Property May Affect Your Obligations Under the ADA
    • It’s Not Just the ADA

Date:  November 17, 2016
Time:  9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Seminar

8:30 am – 9:00 am  – Registration & Breakfast

9:00 am – 12:00 am  – Seminar

Webinar: This seminar is also available via webinar. Please indicate in your RSVP if you will be attending via webinar.

Location

Weintraub Tobin

400 Capitol Mall, 11th Floor | Sacramento, CA 95814

Parking validation provided. Please park in the Wells Fargo parking garage, entrances on 4th and 5th Street.  Please bring your parking ticket with you to the 11th floor.
Approved for three (3) hours MCLE.   This program will be submitted to the HR Certification Institute for review. Certificates will be provided upon verification of attendance for the entirety of the webcast.

There is no cost for this seminar. 
*This seminar will be limited to 75 in-person attendees.  

To RSVP for this event, please visit our events page here: http://www.weintraub.com/category/events or RSVP by e-mailing Ramona Carrillo at rcarrillo@weintraub.com.

As we continue marching toward D-day on the Department of Labor’s new overtime rules kicking in, the rules are facing last minute challenges from all angles.  First, states and private businesses pushed back.  In late September, 21 states jointly filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas asking that the court block the DOL from implementing the rules.  The same day, a group of over 50 businesses jointly filed a similar lawsuit of their own in the same court.  A week later, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would push the rules’ start date out another six months, from December 1, 2016 to June 1, 2017.

The New Exempt Requirements

Under the new DOL rules, the minimum salary threshold for “white collar” exempt employees will effectively double.  Effective December 1, 2016, employees will have to earn $955 per week, which translates to $47,476 annually, to be properly classified as exempt.  In addition to doubling the salary threshold on the white collar exemptions, the new law will increase the salary necessary to retain the “highly compensated employee” exemption.  The HCE exemption currently applies to employees who earn at least $100,000 annually and “customarily and regularly” perform one or more of the exempt duties performed by employees who qualify for one of the white collar exemptions.  Under the new law, these same employees will need to earn at least $134,004 annually.

To account for inflation and cost-of-living increases, the new law also establishes a mechanism for automatically updating the salary and compensation levels described above every three years.

To read the rest of this article, please visit the HRUSA blog here: http://blog.hrusa.com/blog/states-and-congress-challenge-new-overtime-rules/

Weintraub Tobin shareholder, Shauna Correia, will be speaking at the Superior Court Boot Camp on October 14 in San Francisco. To register for this event, click here: http://bit.ly/2dxhtQQ

Shauna Correia is a shareholder in the firm’s San Francisco office. She is an accomplished negotiator and experienced trial attorney. Shauna represents businesses in a broad range of litigation matters in both California and Nevada. Many of Shauna’s clients also rely on her for her advisory and risk-management capacities, and her ability to find ways to reduce exposure or avoid litigation.

On August 23, 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a decision in The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Graduate Workers of Columbia-GWC, UAW.  The NLRB decided that graduate and undergraduate student assistants are common law “employees” within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).  The NLRB has flip-flopped on this issue several times starting in 1974 (The Leland Stanford Junior University (214 NRLB 621) which first held student workers should be excluded from the statutory definition of “employees”, overruled in part in 1999 with regard to student interns, residents and fellows at a Boston Medical Center teaching hospital (330 NLRB 152). In 2000, the Board first held that university graduate student assistants were employees under the Act. In 2004, the Board decided in Brown University that graduate student assistants were not “employees”.

The impact of the NLRB’s most recent Columbia University decision is that student assistants are “employees” and, as such, they are eligible to organize and bargain collectively under federal labor law.  The Board expressly overruled its prior Brown University and Leland Stanford decisions.

To read the rest of this article, visit the HRUSA blog here: http://blog.hrusa.com/blog/university-student-assistants-are-employees-under-nlra/

A new decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit continues to leave employers uncertain as to the enforceability of class action waivers in arbitration agreements.  The Seventh and Ninth Circuits are on one side of the issue, and the Second, Fifth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits on the other.  The Seventh and Ninth Circuits are following the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) position that class action waivers infringe on an individual’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).  The new Ninth Circuit decision makes it more likely that the United States Supreme Court will grant review and end the battle between the circuits.  In the interim, class action waivers will not be enforced in federal courts in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, the states within the Seventh and Ninth Circuits’ jurisdiction.

The Ninth Circuit, in Morris v. Ernest & Young, LLP, No. 13-16599, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 15638 (9th Cir. Aug. 22, 2016), became the second appellate court to invalidate mandatory class waivers in arbitration agreements.  The Seventh Circuit was the first circuit to invalidate a class or collective action waivers in an arbitration agreement in Lewis v. Epic Systems Corporation, 823 F.3d 1147 (7th Cir. 2016), where the court held that when an employer conditions continued employment upon the signing of a class or collective action waiver in an arbitration agreement, the agreement violates the NLRA and is unenforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

To read the rest of this article, please subscribe to the HR USA blog here: http://blog.hrusa.com/blog/ninth-circuit-weighs-in-on-class-action-waivers/