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The Maryland General Assembly’s 2024 session ended at midnight on Monday, April 8. A number of employment bills that were passed will have a significant impact on employers, including another delay to the forthcoming paid family and medical leave insurance (FAMLI) program, a new wage range posting mandate, expanded pay stub notice requirements, and additional discrimination protections, including an expansion of the equal pay law. Employers will also face increased penalties for occupational safety and health violations. Additionally, there was a revision to the law restricting the use of non-compete agreements to make it applicable to certain health care providers and veterinarians.Continue Reading New Employment Laws in Maryland – Changes to Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance, Wage Range Posting Requirements, New Discrimination Protections and More (and a Webinar!)

A recent New York Times article highlighted the use and, frankly, abuse of Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAP – oooooh, good acronym!), also known as stay-or-pay provisions. Under a TRAP, if an employee leaves their job before a certain specific amount of time has passed, they are required to pay back monies ostensibly tied to the costs of training, or finding a replacement, or even lost profits. The use of TRAPs appears to have significantly increased in recent years, and the Biden Administration is paying attention – and it is not happy.Continue Reading “Stay-or-Pay”? A Potential TRAP for Employers!

Once upon a time, employees in all states but Montana (always bucking the establishment!) were presumed to be employed at-will, absent some sort of employment agreement (e.g. individual contract for a term, a collective bargaining agreement, policies that contemplate termination for cause, etc.). That means that either the employer or the employee may terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any or even no reason (as long as it’s not illegal – like, say, discrimination or retaliation). And so our well-meaning but foolish Employer is terribly excited by that principle because they want to get rid of an Employee. But … as with all good fairy tales, there is a dark side.Continue Reading At-Will Employment Is a Fairy Tale…

There have been a couple of interesting situations in the news recently involving employees who have been ordered by a court to repay wages to their employers. One involved a Canadian employee who submitted fraudulent timesheets. Another involves law firm associates who failed to meet their billable hours requirement. And a third involves police officers in a New York town who swiped time clocks for each other to falsely claim time worked. These cases provide some insights for employers – good and bad. Continue Reading Can You Force Employees to Repay Wages?

Maryland’s highest court has ruled that the federal Portal-to-Portal Act has not been adopted or incorporated into Maryland’s Wage and Hour Law, Wage Payment and Collection Law, or the corresponding state regulations – meaning that employers may be responsible for more wages for their Maryland employees under state law than under federal law.
Continue Reading Maryland Employers Beware – State Wage Laws Do Not Incorporate Federal Portal-to-Portal Act and Its Exclusions from Compensation

A National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board’) decision that was once thought to be a significant win for employer property rights may ultimately result in increased property access for off-duty contractor employees, following a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Continue Reading D.C. Circuit Opens Door to Biden Board to Expand Property Access for Off-Duty Contractor Employees

On July 9, 2021, President Biden signed a wide-ranging Executive Order intended to promote competition in the American economy. The E.O. contains 72 initiatives across the whole of government, several of which have a direct employment impact – specifically on non-compete agreements, occupational licensing requirements, and wage-sharing activities between employers.
Continue Reading President Biden Issues Challenging Executive Order Seeking to Ban or Limit Non-Competes, Occupational Licensing Requirements, and Wage-Sharing

On May 21, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis that employment agreements containing waivers of the right to bring class or collective actions over employment-related disputes are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). In so doing, the Court rejected the National Labor Relation Board’s position that such waivers violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) – a position subject to much controversy in the courts and federal agencies.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Approves Use of Class Waivers in Employment Agreements

I know I’m dating myself, but as a lawyer of a certain age, I like a legal agreement to be in paper, with handwritten signatures. The growing use of electronic agreements and signatures is certainly easy and convenient, but it still gives me a little queasy feeling – like the agreement doesn’t really exist. (Don’t even get me started on bitcoin…) I don’t mean to suggest that electronic agreements and signatures aren’t valid. They certainly can be, as I discussed in detail in a prior blog post, Electronic Signatures v. Handwritten Signatures. But, as I also explained in that post, the use of electronic methods does open the door to questions about whether employees actually entered into the agreements in question, as happened in the recent case of Gupta v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC.
Continue Reading Wait – That E-mail Is a Legal Agreement?