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/

On July 29, 2016, the Illinois General Assembly adopted SB 2613 – the Child Bereavement Leave Act (“Act”) which provides eligible employees with the right to take bereavement leave for the death of a child.  The law went into effect immediately.

Covered Employers.  The Act defines covered employers the same way the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) defines employers.  Therefore, a covered employer is one that is engaged in commerce or any industry affecting commerce, and employs fifty (50) or more employees for each working day of twenty (20) or more calendar weeks during the current or preceding calendar year.

Eligible Employees:  The Act defines eligible employees the same way that the FMLA defines employees.  Therefore, an eligible employee is an employee who has worked for the covered employer for at least 12 months (which does not have to be consecutive); has worked for the covered employer at least 1,250 hours during the 12 consecutive months preceding the start of bereavement leave; and works at a worksite where there are at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius.

Leave Entitlement.   An eligible employee is entitled to use a maximum of two (2) weeks (10 work days) of unpaid bereavement leave to:

  • Attend the funeral or alternative to a funeral for a child;
  • Make arrangements necessitated by the death of the child; or
  • Grieve the death of the child.

Bereavement leave must be completed within sixty (60) days after the date on which the employee receives notice of the death of the child.

Read the rest of the article here: http://blog.hrusa.com/blog/illinois-child-bereavement-leave-act/

In a 3-1 ruling, the National Labor Relations Board (“Board”) recently revised its back pay formula and radically departed from its traditional remedy for compensating employees who have been unlawfully terminated. The Board’s ruling now supports employees’ rights to recover search-for-work and interim employment expenses, regardless of whether the employees have interim earnings and regardless of the amount in question.

The case involved King Soopers, Inc. who employed the complainant who was a barista at a Starbucks kiosk in a King Soopers grocery store located in Denver, Colorado. The employee had been asked by a store manager to assist with bagging groceries. She refused and questioned whether she should be doing the work, given that she belonged to a different union. The employee was suspended for five days and then terminated for gross misconduct after a meeting with store managers and her union. In its decision, the Board affirmed the finding that King Soopers violated the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), which protects an employees’ right to engage in protected, concerted activity. It found that she was within her rights to question whether the work she was being assigned belonged to a different union.

To read the rest of this article or others similar to it, please visit the HRUSA blog here: http://blog.hrusa.com/blog/nlrb-revises-back-pay-formula/