Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

 

Rounding out a shorter week, I found a couple articles worth highlighting.  In particular, I call attention to a development at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which has the potential to dramatically impact how the agency (and its general counsel) litigate matters going forward.

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


Restaurant Owners, Rising Labor Costs, & Staying Afloat

Jaya Saxena at Eater wrote an article recently that took stock among some restaurant owners in regard to how they were managing to pay their employees a living wage while also juggling increasing menu prices (to the chagrin of some customers.)  It should come as no surprise that with many employers increasing pay rates for their employees (whether voluntarily or by local ordinance/statute), that has resulted in increasing prices on the menu to offset the rising labor costs.  I will refer readers to the article for a survey of how some of these employers have implemented the rising labor costs and the positive/negative results it has produced.  For many of these employers, however, increasing prices on menus is worth doing in order to stay afloat.


EEOC Considering Requiring Commission Vote Before General Counsel Could File Suit

In a somewhat novel situation, the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), Janet Dhillon, recently circulated a proposal which would require the approval of the five EEOC Commissioners before the EEOC’s General Counsel could file a lawsuit.  (Currently, the General Counsel is charged with filing lawsuits without needing the approval of the EEOC Commissioners.)  Of course, any cynic would look at this proposal and claim it was an attempt to hinder the incoming administration of Joe Biden from implementing and litigating its own EEOC agenda.  However, with Republican appointed EEOC Commissioners having a 3 - 2 majority control of the EEOC until 2022, this proposal is an attempt to stymie the incoming administration before it even takes office next month.  Will it work?  That is tough to say as similar proposals have been circulated over the years, including last year, without much success.  If this proposal gets approved, it will be a hard fought scrap to get there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more