November 2012

Almost every nonunion company’s employee handbook has the standard clause: employment is at-will.  This indisputably is a permissible term of employment, right?  The answer to that question depends on how the policy is phrased.   According to recent pronouncements from the NLRB, if a “reasonable employee” could read such a policy as making unionization futile, then

Human resources personnel recognize that they are usually not the decision-maker when it comes to employment decisions about other employees – rather, the decision-makers typically are those in the employees’ direct chain of command.  Courts have generally held that inappropriate remarks by non-decision-makers are not direct evidence of discrimination.  As noted by the federal district