I recently overheard a plaintiff’s employment lawyer quip that the best form of job security for an employee is to file a retaliation claim. While there may be some plausibility to that, it is certainly not a truism. There is no question that an employer should be extremely cautious when disciplining employees who have filed…
This story applies directly only to the restaurant industry, but it is a cautionary tale for every employer in Connecticut subject to the Department of Labor’s authority to write and interpret its regulations. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act and almost all state wage-hour laws recognize “tip credit” – which means that the employer of…
The United States Citizenship & Immigration Service announced yesterday that it received nearly 233,000 H-1B visa petitions in the first week of the application window for the 85,000 cap-subject visas available for fiscal year 2016. That record-breaking number means that nearly two-thirds of employers who prepared diligently ahead of the opening of the season, in…
Unemployment compensation is a form of social insurance. Workers who lose their jobs receive benefits – which are less than they earned when employed – to provide a level of income while transitioning to the next job. Therefore the “default setting” for the unemployment compensation system is that an individual who has been separated from…
With a bill signed into law last month, Wisconsin became the nation’s 25th “right to work” state. In this context, right-to-work means the right of an employee of a unionized company to retain his job even if he chooses not to join or support the union. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which governs relations between…
