In light of the wave of substantial changes to Colorado’s employment laws, a recent less significant change may have escaped the attention of your human resources team. Recently passed Senate Bill 22-234 reshapes how unemployment benefits are administered and funded in Colorado. One of the new law’s provisions requires employers to provide employees with additional information for unemployment benefits upon separation, including identifying the reason for separation.
In a world radically changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the way we communicate in the workplace has been permanently altered with the integration of online communication platforms. Effective communication is essential to human functioning, including within the context of organizations and business entities. But the common workplace communication method changed swiftly when communication technologies replaced in-person communication that once typified office settings. While the integration of online communication platforms was a major contributor to the survival of many businesses, is it possible that these same communication platforms have the potential to exacerbate underlying differences among a diverse and remote workforce leading to increased employment litigation?
On June 10, 2022, Illinois amended its Child Bereavement Leave Act (“CBLA”) to include unpaid leave for employees following an “unexpected lack of parenthood,” and deaths of other family members, including stepchildren, spouses, domestic partners, siblings, parents or stepparents, parents-in-law, grandchildren, or grandparents. The new legislation is known as the Family Bereavement Leave Act (“FBLA”).
While diversity, equity, and inclusion have slowly made their way to the forefront of many employers’ minds, two dimensions of diversity are often overlooked in these discussions –neurodiversity and ability diversity. More than 1 billion people, 15% of the global population, live with a disability. Thus, employers must ensure that neurodiversity and employees and applicants with disabilities are properly represented in DEI initiatives.
While many employers maintain “Professional Dress and Hygiene” policies in their Employee Handbooks – or as stand-alone policies – managers, supervisors, and human resources personnel are rarely trained on how to implement those policies. The common result is, unfortunately, that these policies are applied unfairly or more strictly toward Black and other racially diverse employees. Very seldom do we see policies that specifically prohibit braids, dreads, locks, twists, or knots anymore. Instead, these policies often state that employee hairstyles must be “professional” (very helpful),“neat,” and well-managed,” for example. Keeping your policy language broad can be helpful by giving your managers, supervisors, and HR personnel deference, but it can also result in disparate treatment if the decision-maker has conscious or unconscious biases about what is viewed as “professional” and make determinations under the policy relying on those unfair biases.
As anticipated, Governor Polis signed into law last week Colorado’s new limitations on restrictive covenants, which includes noncompetition, nonsolicitation, and confidentiality covenants. Our Colorado employment team has already issued a legal alert that provides detail about the bill. FAQs: Colorado Further Limits Restrictive Covenants.
Predictability and fairness are typical pillars of employment law. Where predictability allows both employers and workers to understand and navigate the rules and regulations that are applicable to them, fairness provides a constant level of security to all parties. Recently, the Texas Supreme Court used an unpredictable procedure to reach what it calls a “rule of fairness and right.”
Not surprisingly, simple solutions to complex issues are often elusive. Yet on rare occasions, the solution is in plain sight. Doubtful? For employers struggling with the issue of a remote employee’s eligibility for job-protected leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), there is a very simple answer. And, unlike the analysis we discussed in our commentary about wage and hour issues for remote employees, the answer does not depend on the location of the remote employee.
One of my mother’s many pearls of wisdom handed down over the years included this Eleanor Roosevelt quote: “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”
On Tuesday, April 19, the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section hosted the panel “Navigating the New Normal: Accommodations in the Pandemic Era.” The panel members were Alex Breland of CDK Global in Chicago, IL; Pamela Devi Chandran of the Washington State Nurses Association in Seattle, WA; and Jackie Gessner of Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis, IN. Carolyn Wheeler of Katz, Marshall, & Banks LLP in Washington, DC served as moderator. Their consensus was that, although vaccines have (thankfully) lowered Covid-19 infection and death rates, workplace challenges related to Covid have not gone away. They have only changed.