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The IRS has released final regulations on how the new health care law defines “affordable” coverage.    Generally speaking, workers must have access to affordable health care from their employers, or the employer faces a penalty.   The IRS regulations now make clear that the government will deem a plan affordable so long as the individual worker’s…

The Labor Board has released its long-awaited second “Facebook case.”  To nobody’s surprise, the NLRB has largely adopted the ALJ decision that the Facebook postings in question constitute protected concerted activity under Section 7.

In Hispanics United of Buffalo, an employee threatened to report several of her co-workers to management who she felt did…

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…

On October 1, 2012, Maryland’s first-in-the-nation law prohibiting employers from requiring – or even requesting – that employees provide pass codes to personal websites and devices took effect.  Colloquially, this is the “Facebook Privacy Right.”  Employers that fail to hire an applicant or discipline or discharge an employee for refusing to disclose a personal pass…

An employee has requested a religious accommodation – do you need to grant it?  Federal and state anti-discrimination laws require employers to provide reasonable accommodation for the religious practices and beliefs of employees, but relieves companies of the obligation if doing so will cause an undue hardship on the business.

Accommodations might include modified schedules,…