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What I've Been Reading This Week


The Supreme Court's decision earlier this summer in Janus v. AFSCME has continued to reverberate in the labor law arena time and time again.  In particular, an article from The Huffington Post highlighted one union's efforts to stymie the potential negative impact of Janus.  Whether it will be successful (or even catch on elsewhere) is up for debate.  However, this union's efforts to survive in a post Janus world are worth highlighting.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.



Hurricane Michael, Work, & Whether An Employer Has to Pay Employees When the Office is Closed

Hopefully readers that are (or were in the path of Hurricane Michael) are safe and managed to avoid the brunt of the storm.  For those that have had to deal with the hurricane this week, many likely had their work schedules disrupted.  The question inevitably turns to whether the employer still has to pay its employees when the office/workplace is closed because of a storm such as this (although this article is applicable to other related events such as ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes, etc).  As this article notes, there can be some differences depending on the laws of a particular state, but in general, an exempt employee that has worked any portion of the workweek must be paid their entire salary.  Of course employers can require that these exempt employees use their paid time off first, but for an employee that has no paid time off, an employer cannot refuse to pay these employees.  As for non-exempt employees, an employer does not have to pay these non-exempt employees when the office/worksite is closed.


Following Janus, Some Unions Get Back to the Basics To Help With Retention

Back in June, the United States Supreme Court issued a much talked about decision in Janus v. AFSCME that held that government workers could not be required to pay agency fees to a union to represent them.  As a result, millions of public sector workers across the country were suddenly given the opportunity to withdraw from their union, not pay the union any more agency fees, yet still have the union represent them in the collective bargaining process.  As Dave Jamieson at The Huffington Post writes, that threw many public sector unions into a state of flux with their members now having the ability to withdraw from their unions and not pay agency fees.  However, one particular public sector union, the Peoria Federation of Teachers, decided to get down to the basics and start talking with and listening to its members in an effort to strengthen its image among workers as providing them with a needed benefit in the workplace.  This past summer, the union sent two public school teachers around Peoria to sit and listen to their fellow educators with an emphasis on achieving a bottom up organizing model focused on involving members more deeply with the union and setting its agenda.  Whether this grass roots sort of engagement proves to be effective in retaining public sector union members is difficult to say at this point...but in the interim, it appears to be making some public sector unions reevaluate how they operate, in a turbulent time following Janus.


Updated: Hello Amazon $15/Hour Pay Raise, Goodbye Amazon Bonuses and Stock Awards

Last week, Amazon announced that by November 1st, it would raise the hourly pay rate for its U.S. employees to $15/hour.  (For hourly employees already earning over $15/hour, the company will raise those hourly wage rates by $1).  Amazon employees, the Fight for $15 movement, U.S. Senators, and others cheered this news as a groundbreaking and potentially far reaching development that could trigger other large scale employers in the U.S. to follow suit.  However, Spencer Soper at Bloomberg noted that while Amazon is raising the hourly minimum wage rate for its U.S. employees, the company is also eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for many of its hourly employees.  With that being said, Amazon pointed out that these workers will still see their total compensation increase.  In the long run, I suspect that many hourly workers will be drawn (initially) to the $15/hour wage rate rather than the opportunity to earn bonuses or stock awards.  For the time being, the loss of these portions of an Amazon employee's hourly compensation package has not gained much traction.  Let us see whether the take home pay of these employees does indeed increase after November 1st, as the company has stated.


California Employers & Employees, Take Note: Governor Brown Signs Several Relevant Bills Into Law

On September 30th, California Governor Jerry Brown signed several bills into law that will impact California employers and employees alike.  The bills, namely SB 820, SB1300, SB 1343, SB1412, AB 1976, AB 2079, AB 2338, and AB 3082, cover a range of employment law matters including confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements (relating to workplace harassment/assaults), criminal background checks during the application process, and the requirement that an employer make a reasonable effort to provide employees with the use of a room or other location for lactation in the workplace, among other topics.  This article from The National Law Review is worth a quick read for an update on these new bills that were recently signed into law.

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