Articles Discussing General Human Resources Issues.

On October 7, 2015, the White House and the U.S. Department of Labor will host a “Summit on Worker Voice,” an event intended to “ensure that working Americans are fully sharing in the benefits of the broad-based economic growth that they are helping to create.” The all-day event marketed for workers, employers, unions, organizers and other advocates will feature multiple panels on labor- and employment-related topics, including union organizing. President Obama will conclude the Summit with a town hall meeting to discuss the “Future of Worker Voice.”

Courts continue to wrestle with preemption issues, the tension between sweeping federal laws purporting to regulate an industry or industries and laws enacted at the local level, such as labor laws impacting labor costs. In the most recent example, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected a cargo airline’s argument that the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978’s mandate that states make no law impacting the “price, route or service of an air carrier,” preempts Miami-Date County’s living wage ordinance as applied to such carriers. Amerijet Int’l v. Miami-Dade County, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 16700 (11th Cir. 2015).

Sensitive employer information may be the subject of secret Government prying. With the pervasive use of smart phones in business today, and with those phones containing confidential personal and business information, law enforcement has the ability to take information from those smart phones without an employer’s knowledge.

With the race for the White House heating up, the “politics of marijuana” is looming as a possibly significant factor.

It is vital that all employers investigate internal complaints that may be covered under a variety of laws, including EEO laws (for example, Title VII, ADA, ADEA, and state EEO laws), whistleblower laws such as, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd Frank (and state whistleblower laws), OSHA, the False Claims Act, and the NLRA. Additionally, employers conduct investigations in response to employee misconduct and violations of company policies, procedures and codes of conduct. Once an employer is on notice of a complaint, it has the duty to investigate promptly and thoroughly. When the individual raising the concern is a current employee, additional practical considerations should be considered.

Executive Summary: Florida Governor Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency as forecasters continue to track the path of Tropical Storm Erika, which is predicted to hit the state on Monday. Although it is unclear how strong the storm will be when it reaches land, it has killed several people in the Caribbean, and emergency agencies along the East Coast of the U.S. are urging residents to be ready. The approaching storm serves as a reminder that employers should be prepared to address storm-related issues if they are required to close their businesses and as they prepare to resume normal operations. For example, employers need to determine whether closing the office means having to pay workers who stay home, being on the hook for unemployment compensation, and whether workers’ compensation applies to weather-related injuries.

Before the Senate adjourned for the August recess, two Democratic members tried to force the chamber to agree to bring minimum wage, paid sick leave, and flexible scheduling bills to the floor for a vote in the fall. On Wednesday, Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked for unanimous consent that by October 30, 2015, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) be discharged from further considering the Raise the Wage Act (S. 1150), Healthy Families Act (S. 497), and the Schedules That Work Act (S. 1772), and allow the bills to proceed to the Senate floor for a vote. The HELP Committee has jurisdiction over employment-related legislation, and must approve such bills before discharging them to the full Senate for consideration. Predictably, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), on behalf of HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN), objected to this move, officially thwarting the attempt. The effort to push these employment bills through, however, lays the groundwork for themes sure to surface time and again before the 2016 election.

The world of Big Data has arrived, and it is beginning to affect employers and their decision-making in ways undreamed of even a few years ago. Employers can access more information about their applicant pool than ever before, and have an ability to correlate data gleaned from the application itself, perhaps supplemented by publicly available social media sources, to determine how long a candidate is likely to stay on a particular job. Similarly, by combing through computerized calendar entries and e-mail headers, Big Data can tell us which employees are likely to leave their employment within the next 12 months.

On July 27, 2015, U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act of 2015 (H.R. 3226) (the “Bill”). The Bill would require that publicly traded companies more broadly and specifically disclose their policies and efforts aimed at ridding their supply chains of slavery and human trafficking. It is anticipated that a Senate version of the Bill will be introduced soon. The Bill is similar in certain respects to the United Kingdom’s recently enacted Modern Slavery Act 20151 and the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010, which took effect in 2012.2 The Bill also bears some similarity to recent amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, effective March 2, 2015, also directed at eliminating trafficking within government contractors’ supply chains.3

Even Nebraska and North Dakota, conservative states wary of placing restrictions on employers, enacted new protections for pregnant women in the workplace, showing that both parties are heeding the complaints of their harried constituents.

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would require employers to consider their employees’ requests for changes to their work schedules and to provide more predictable and stable schedules for employees in certain occupations with evidence of unpredictable and unstable scheduling practices.

Littler, the largest employment and labor law practice in the world representing management, has released its 2015 Executive Employer Survey. The report highlights the insight from more than 500 respondents on a variety of issues impacting employers. Littler’s survey of in-house counsel, human resource professionals and high-level executives from many of the largest companies in the United States also covered the economy and regulatory matters. The survey was conducted in April and May 2015.

Don’t look now—we may have made it through the July 4 weekend, but the seas are roiling for banks regulated by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That agency has adopted new “safety and soundness” guidelines which impose important human resources-related obligations on large foreign and domestic banks.

Cyber-security and data breaches are hot-button issues that recently received some well-deserved attention from the federal government.

A CNN op-ed piece caught my eye recently as it discussed some of the difficulties the so-called millennial generation is having in Silicon Valley and elsewhere when it comes to finding gainful employment. It paints a very grim picture about “sharing economy” jobs like Uber, Lyft, or Instacart.