DOL Overtime Rule
The U.S. DOL announced that it will publish a Final Rule to update the regulations governing the exemption of executive, administrative, and professional employees from the minimum wage and overtime pay protections of the FLSA. Employers should take note that they may use nondiscretionary bonuses and incentive payments to satisfy up to 10% of the new standard salary level.
Should You 'ERISA-fy' Your Severance Plan?
Employers with severance plans need to know whether or not their plans are subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). And if the employer finds that they are not, it may wish to consider amending the plans to bring them under ERISA.
Joint Employment and the Contingent Worker
Many companies are staffing through non-traditional arrangements. Many of these contingent arrangements result in third parties. These arrangements generally allow the putative joint employer to minimize or even avoid functions such as recruiting, screening, hiring, paying workers, and complying with labor and employment laws. This avoidance, however, often comes with significant risks.
The Tyson Foods Ruling
The Supreme Court's recent decision in <I>Bouaphakeo v. Tyson Foods</I> was decidedly not the sweeping ruling many practitioners anticipated. Nevertheless, the decision provided useful guidance for class-action litigants regarding the proper use of representative evidence.
Will Dave & Buster's ACA Employer-Mandate Plan Design Land It in Hot Water with ERISA?
Under the ACA, employers with 50 or more full-time, or full-time equivalent, employees on business days during the previous calendar year are required to offer qualified health care coverage, which meets minimum value and affordability standards to their full-time employees. If they fail to comply with these this "employer mandate," then the employer may be faced with significant penalties.
Corporate-Sponsored Research Agreements With Universities
Corporate-sponsored research plays a crucial role in performing foundational research in new technology areas. These research projects are also mutually beneficial. Corporate sponsors receive a cost-effective opportunity to explore new technology areas with leading academics and talented students. In turn, universities benefit from Sponsors providing research funding and industry expertise.
The NLRB and the Joint Employer
Recent NLRB decisions have rewritten the labor law map in a variety of ways, but nowhere more significantly than in the areas of franchising and outsourcing. This portends a vast expansion of employer liability on a joint employer theory in almost every area of law imaginable from tort to employment discrimination litigation.
Ethics and Criminal Practice
Social media can be used to reveal personal communications, provide location information, prove and disprove alibis, establish crime or criminal enterprise and show instrumentalities or fruits of a crime. But there is no one rule of professional conduct that addresses what a lawyer can advise a client concerning the use of social media.
