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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the “Board”) announced a return to the pre-2020 “setting-specific” standard in cases where employees are disciplined for misconduct occurring during the course of activity protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The case, Lion Elastomers, LLC II, overrules the Trump-era Board decision in General Motors, which assessed the employer’s motive in taking adverse action against an employee who may have engaged in misconduct during the course of protected activity. Consequently, the Board is likely to permit employees greater latitude to make abusive, offensive, or profane comments in the workplace if such comments have even an attenuated link to activity that may be protected by the NLRA.…

Continue Reading NLRB Returns to More Lenient Standard for Employees’ Abusive and Profane Misconduct

The Maryland General Assembly’s 2023 session ended at midnight on Monday, April 10. Although there were fewer employment bills passed this year compared to recent years, several of them will have a significant impact on employers, including an expedited increase to the minimum wage rate and some clarification around and a delay to the new paid family and medical leave benefits program. There was also an expansion to the non-compete ban, as well as new authority for the Maryland Attorney General to pursue discrimination claims against employers. Finally, although the cannabis reform bill does not directly speak to the general workplace impact, there are developments of which employers should be aware. We will be holding a webinar with the Maryland Chamber of Commerce at noon on May 3, 2023 to provide guidance on compliance with these new laws.…

Continue Reading New Employment Laws in Maryland – Expedited Minimum Wage Increase, Changes to Paid Family and Medical Leave, and More (and a Webinar!)

The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or the “Board”) took significant steps to limit the power of property owners to restrict contractors’ workers access to their property in a 3-2 decision on Friday. In Bexar County II, the Board reverted to the test articulated in New York New York Hotel & Casino, 356 NLRB 907 (2011), concluding that property owners may only restrict access by contractors’ workers when the workers’ activities “significantly interfere” with the use of the property, or where the property owner has “another legitimate business reason” to remove them from their property.
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Continue Reading The NLRB’s Reinstatement of a Worker-Friendly Standard for Property Access

During the past week or so, various federal agencies have issued additional COVID-19 guidance of significance (more or less) to employers, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS). We summarize these developments below.
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Continue Reading COVID-19 Agency Update: CDC and Essential Workers, EEOC and Non-Discrimination, OSHA and COVID-19 Recordkeeping/Enforcement, DOL and Unemployment Compensation Under CARES, and VETS and COVID-19 National Guard Service

The Department of Labor has issued several resources on the Families First Coronavirus Response Act: a fact sheet for employers, a fact sheet for employees and a Questions and Answers resource. In particular, the last of these resources answers many, although certainly not all, of the multitude of questions that have arisen in the wake of the enactment of the FFCRA and its paid sick leave and expanded Family and Medical Leave Act requirements, which we discussed in our March 19, 2020 E-Lert.
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Continue Reading DOL Provides Guidance on the Families First Coronavirus Response Act

Employment lawyers on the management side of the “v” (as in verses for you lucky enough never to have been sued) are hunkered down with our clients on the phone these days. We are figuring out minute by minute how to foretell the COVID-19 future, to determine what the feds will require, what the governors will mandate, and how to balance operational needs, financial insecurity, employee fear, leave from work and needs of clients for services, including vulnerable clients (patients, individuals who need medical equipment after discharge, patrons who need food and prescriptions – all the vital services that we assume are available and that businesses seamlessly provide in normal times).
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Continue Reading Love you!!

On January 12, 2018, the Maryland General Assembly overrode Governor Hogan’s veto of the “Maryland Healthy Working Families Act.” Therefore, Maryland employers are now required to provide paid “earned sick and safe” (ESS) leave to employees to use for themselves and to care for their family members. This law is currently scheduled to take effect on February 11, 2018, but Senator Middleton stated that they may be seeking an extension to make the law effective after 90 days instead. We will be holding a complimentary webinar to further discuss compliance with this new law, but we summarize its detailed requirements and obligations, as follows:…
Continue Reading Maryland Paid Sick And Safe Leave Is Now Law

Earle K. Shawe, the founder of our firm, passed away on June 30, 2017, at age 104. Earle was present during the infancy of the modern labor law movement in the 1930s, and left his mark throughout the subsequent decades of his practice – truly a giant in the field of labor law.

Earle was a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School – an institution to which he remained devoted throughout his life. In 1996, he endowed the Earle K. Shawe Professorship in Employment Law at the school.
Continue Reading Earle K. Shawe – The Passing of a Labor Law Pioneer

Imagine this: Your cobook 2mpany has policies in your employee handbook determined to be unlawful by the NLRB.  Then, you and the NLRB engage in a line-by-line revision of the policies to ensure compliance with Board law and thereafter you issue a new handbook, with policies approved by the Board, to your employees.  Everything is ok, right? Wrong!  This is exactly what occurred in Boch Imports, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board.  In affirming the NLRB, the First Circuit determined that the Employer failed to properly repudiate its prior, unlawful handbook policies even though it revised those policies in collaboration with the NLRB Regional Office.
Continue Reading Must Employers Repudiate Unlawful Handbook Policies?