Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week


Another week and another challenge to employer mandated coronavirus vaccine requirements.  In this week’s edition, we see a stalemate between Southwest & American Air following an order from the Texas Governor that prohibits employers in the state from requiring vaccines as a condition of employment.  While the subsequent articles I note are worth reading, I wanted to lead things off with this particular topic.

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


Southwest & American Air Intend to Require Vaccines, Despite Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Order

On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an order that prohibits employers in the state from requiring their employees get the coronavirus vaccine as a condition of employment.  (Governor Abbott has also called for a special session in which he wants the Texas Legislature to pass a similar law.)  As some readers might be aware, Southwest and American Air are both headquartered in the Dallas Fort Worth area.  However, Governor Abbott’s order conflicts with the federal mandate in place that all businesses that have a federal contract are required to have a fully vaccinated workforce.  As Oriana Pawlyk at Politico writes, both Southwest and American Air have indicated they intend to proceed ahead with the requirement that its workforces be fully vaccinated by the start of December or risk termination.  According to reports, these employers believe that federal law supersedes state law.  As with many of the vaccine mandates in the workplace, I suspect this will get tied up in litigation sooner rather than later.


Paid Federal Leave Could Cost Up to $20 Billion By 2027

A paid leave bill is currently working its way through Congress, which could provide all federal workers with up to twelve weeks of paid leave to deal with a personal illness, care for a family member with a serious illness, or in connection with a family member going (or returning) from active duty.  As with any bill working its way through Congress, the Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) provides an estimate of how much the proposed legislation would cost.  In this instance, the CBO estimated that depending upon how much leave is actually used by each federal employee, the total cost could reach $20 billion during the fiscal years of 2022 - 2027.  These numbers might be eye watering to some readers.  Although with the debt crisis temporarily at bay until December, what’s another $20 billion added to the national debt…?


28 New York Based Groups Call for Senate Vote on Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Earlier this week, 28 New York based groups sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and urged the Senate to vote on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.  That legislation, which passed the House and is stuck in the Senate, would require employers with 15 or more employees to provide pregnant workers with mutually agreed upon reasonable accommodations.  Currently, employers are not required to provide pregnant workers with any accommodation as pregnant workers are not considered to be “disabled” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).  (For those unaware, the ADA stipulates that disabled workers are entitled to a reasonable accommodation from their employer to account for a worker’s disability, so long as the accommodation request is not unreasonably burdensome on the employer.)

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