Labor & Employment Article Archives

Fourth Circuit Rejects Board Back Pay Award In Salting Case

January, 2017

At long last, a rational voice has spoken in a “salt” case. On March 29, 2002, the Fourth Circuit refused to enforce the back pay portion of a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) decision ordering an electrical contractor to pay a “salt” from the time he applied for job and was rejected to the date several years later when the contractor, in compliance with a Board order, finally offered him employment.

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New Sexual Orientation Law Protects More Than Just The Bisexual And Heterosexual Population

Under Maryland’s “new” sexual orientation legislation, codified at Md. Code 1957, Art. 49B, employers may not, in making employment decisions, discriminate on the basis of their applicants’ or employees’ sexual orientation. The legislation broadens Maryland’s civil rights law banning discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, sex, age, color, national origin, marital status, and disability to include a ban on discrimination also on the basis of sexual orientation.

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Standard Requirement Under Many Bonus and Commission Plans No Longer Valid Under The Maryland Wage Payment Law – At Least For Now

In Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc. (March 19, 2002), the Supreme Court ended the dispute over a controversial Department of Labor (“DOL”) regulation that provided employers a grand total of “one or two business days” to designate an employee’s leave from work as qualifying under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (“FMLA”).

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How To Be And Remain Union-Free

| By Donald F. Burke

Unions are a mere possibility. They are not inevitable. Since their heyday in the 1950s, the organized workforce has shrunk from around 35 percent to approximately 10 percent of the total private-sector workforce. This trend is continuing and instructs us that employers who take the threat of unionization seriously and have a true commitment to reducing this threat by lawful means are likely to be, and remain, union-free. The key to remaining union-free is “doing what is right and fair” to employees. “Doing what is right and fair” results in a clear advantage to the employer faced by union organizing activities. As a consequence of “doing what is right and fair,” employees will ask the organizer, “who needs the union anyway,” and “why should I pay for what I already have?”

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