Labor and Employment Update for the HRMA April 2011 Luncheon
Brooke Duncan III, HRMA New Orleans Legislative Chair
Adams and Reese LLP, 504.585.0220,
On the Labor Front
The NLRB continues to push the envelope when it comes to restrictions on employees communicating how they feel about, well, just about everything. The Board is entertaining a union charge that complains about an employer rule against using electronic communication and/or social media to target, offend, demean, disparage, or harm customers, fellow employees, or the company. Stay tuned.
A federal court says it’s OK for a union to fine one of its members for reporting a fellow member’s safety violation to their employer as required by company policy. The union said the employee was guilty of “harassment” and “abusive behavior” toward his fellow union member. Only in a union.
At the EEOC
New ADA rules: “Impairment” to be construed broadly—need not be severe or significantly restrict performance; severity versus short-term duration; mitigations may not be considered except for, e.g., eyeglasses or contacts; episodic impairments or impairments in remission are nonetheless disabilities when active; “major life activities” now include functions of the immune system, cell growth, etc.; and brain, neurological, and endocrine functions; “regarded as” means how the individual is treated.
In the Courts
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that oral complaints under the FLSA are protected from retaliation. This decision shouldn’t come as a big surprise—retaliation’s a no-no.
The feds are suing a school district for failure to reasonably accommodate a religious practice because the district wouldn’t let a teacher take off 19 days for a pilgrimage, during a grading period, in the teacher’s first year of employment, when she was one of only two math teachers. Her attorney concedes 19 days is a lot but that waiting to use a summer vacation in a later school year would have been unreasonable.
Other News
The Louisiana legislature is in session but it’s a special session so we shouldn’t see any employment-related bills, right? Not quite. E-verify has been proposed and there’s a bill to ban asking job applicants if they’ve been arrested. Of real significance but garnering little attention is the possibility that NOLA’s civil service will lose its constitutional protection because the provision is triggered by population and of course the city has fewer people since the last census.