Rojgar Job News

On August 9, 2019, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed into law the Illinois Workplace Transparency Act (“WTA”), imposing new requirements and modifying existing laws in ways that will impact nearly all Illinois employers – and may be a signal of things to come in other US states.  The WTA aims to address concerns raised through the #MeToo movement regarding the frequency of sexual harassment occurrences and concealment of claims of such unlawful conduct.  But the WTA also goes beyond concerns regarding sexual harassment and addresses prohibitions against other unlawful employment practices and concealment of such claims, and creates broad restrictions on confidentiality provisions that are commonly included in employment and separation agreements, amending the Illinois Human Rights Act to expand protected categories under the law and require disclosures about legal claims of unlawful employment practices, and limiting the use of arbitration agreements. ...

Our colleagues Colter Paulson and Justin DiCharia at the Sixth Circuit Appellate Blog (which covers, as you may have guessed, developments in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit) authored the post below discussing the Sixth Circuit’s recent decision in a case in which the Court was tasked with deciding whether an employer may enter into agreements with its employees to shorten the time period for filing of employment discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Employers in the Sixth Circuit may want to review their employment contracts following a recent decision in which the court ruled that employers cannot contractually shorten the statutory limitations period for Title VII claims—except in the arbitration context. In  Logan v. MGM Grand Detroit Casino , Judge Bush (with Judges Boggs and Gibbons joining) explained that Title VII’s 300-day statute of limitations for discrimination claims is a substantive right granted by Co...

On March 17, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued a temporary, three-month exemption from certain equal employment opportunity requirements for new supply and services and construction contracts “entered into specifically to provide Coronavirus relief.”  In the National Interest Exemption Memorandum (NIE Memorandum), the OFCCP provided modified equal opportunity clause language that federal contractors may use in covered contracts and exempts such contracts from all affirmative action obligations, posting requirements, solicitation/advertisement requirements, and mandatory job listing requirements under the following laws administered by the OFCCP: Executive Order 11246 (which prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, veteran status, or national origin); Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act o...

On April 16, 2020, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the First District Court of Texas held that an employer could compel a former employee to arbitrate her wrongful termination case, even though it had not signed the arbitration agreement, because the evidence demonstrated that the employer intended to be bound by the agreement and there was no evidence that the parties intended for the employer’s signature to be a condition precedent to the contract’s enforcement. In SK Plymouth, LLC et al. v. Simmons , the plaintiff brought a wrongful termination suit against her former employers SK Plymouth, LLC, SK E&P Operations America, LLC (SKEPOA), and her former supervisor (collectively the “Appellants”), claiming that her employment was terminated in retaliation for reporting her supervisor’s harassing conduct to the human resources department.  Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that her supervisor mistreated her based on her gender, race...