Rojgar Job News

It never seems to fail; I go on vacation and the Connecticut Supreme Court issues one of the few employment law decisions it issues every year during that week. Fortunately for all of us, it concerns the fluctuating work week method of overtime computation which most employers in the state consciously either avoid or try not to understand.  (In very basic terms, the formula calculates a pay rate based on the number of hours an employee actually works in a particular weeks.) I’ve previously discussed the “perils of trying to rely on a fluctuating work week.” As recently as 2012, I said that “while it can provide some benefit for employers, it must be done properly and must not be raised after the fact.”  And I noted way back in 2008 that employers have to jump through a variety of hoops to make sure they are compliant. Add to this cautionary tale the latest Connecticut Supreme Court case of Williams v. General Nutrition Centers, Inc.  The...

“Joe, in response to all this NFL stuff, we want you to display U.S. flags at your workstation.” “No.” “Well, then you’re fired.” Don’t think that can happen? Then you haven’t heard about the Cotto v. United Technologies Corp. case — a long-forgotten Connecticut Supreme Court case from 20 years ago that has particular meaning in today’s environment where standing for the national anthem has become front page news. Is this patriotic too? The basic facts are as I described them above: The plaintiff alleged in his complaint that he was employed on a full-time basis by the defendant for approximately twelve years. In April 1991, the employer distributed American flags to employees in the plaintiff’s department and it was expected that all employees would display American flags at their workstations. The plaintiff declined to display the American flag and further gave his opinion on the propriety of coercing o...

In an important 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court this morning held, for the first time, that class or collective action waivers, particularly in wage/hour cases, and contained in arbitration agreements between employers and employees are valid and enforceable. Because wage and hour class and collective actions are quite costly for employers to defend against, this decision should cause employers in Connecticut (and nationwide) to re-evaluate their employment relationships with employees and consider enacting wide-ranging arbitration agreements that include class-action and collective action waivers. The decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (download here) was just released at 10 a.m. this morning, so I’ll have more in an upcoming post after I’ve had time to digest it, but here’s the summary from the Supreme Court itself: In each of these cases, an employer and employee entered into a contract providing for individualized arbitration proceedings to resolve emplo...

On “Survivor”, one of my favorite broadcast TV shows (or, as my YouTube/Netflix watching teens might say — “what’s that?”) the notion of “immunity” plays a central role in the outcome of an episode. And in a decision released last week by the Connecticut Supreme Court, whether or not to grant immunity again plays a pivotal role for religious employers. In its unanimous decision, the court refused to grant outright immunity to a religious institution from an employment discrimination claim.  The case, Trinity Christian School v. CHRO , can be downloaded here. For religious institutions, the case serves as reminder that while the employment discrimination laws may be more limited in their impact (more on that in a second), seeking “immunity” from such claims is a step too far for the courts. In doing so, it’s helpful to note that the U.S. Supreme Court decided earlier this decade that the “ministerial exception...

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning in Janus v. AFSCME (download here) reversed 40 years of labor law precedent and concluded that  requiring public employees to pay “agency fees” for labor unions that they don’t want to belong to violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Previously, prior cases have banned forcing public sector employees from joining a union and paying union dues. But a number of states permitted union contracts that required employees to still pay an “agency fee” to cover the costs of collective bargaining. In its 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this — leaving public sector unions, particularly in states like Connecticut, to potentially lose significant funds from employees who say that they want no part of their salary to go towards unions. Given that this blog covers more employment law than labor law, and focuses more on private-sector than public sector, I’m not going to do a deep-dive today...

In a few weeks, the Connecticut Supreme Court will begin it’s next session.  As I looked at the calendar assignment for the first term, what I began to realize is something that’s been gnawing at me for a while — there’s not an employment law case to be found on the docket. Then I started to look back at last year’s session (2018-2019).  Term after term. Where were the employment law cases? Unless I missed something, there wasn’t an employment law case to be found  anywhere on last year’s case docket.   (The only two that were even in the same neighborhood concerned a procedural requirement of the Municipal Employee Indemnification Statute, and a Labor Arbitration issue.) In fact, I had to go back to the summer of 2017 to find the last major employment law case that the Connecticut Supreme Court considered.  That case — on the fluctuating workweek — at least gave us some guidance on a thorny wage & hour i...

As someone who grew up in Connecticut and watched Channel 3 news religiously (at least before the internet), Denise D’Ascenzo, the local news anchor who passed away suddenly on Saturday, was one of a kind.  She was professional, authoritative, knowledgeable, and humble. I loved watching her both on the news and during the yearly Muscular Dystrophy telethons that she and weatherman Hilton Kaderli used to host every Labor Day. I didn’t know her other than meeting briefly at a local event or two, but like many viewers, she became one of those people who could you rely upon in times of need.  It’s hard for me to imagine local Hartford news without her steadying presence. It is a testament to her amazing career that her connection to one of the most famous employment discrimination cases in the state is now merely a footnote. Back in 1999, former Channel 3 news anchor Janet Peckinpaugh prevailed in an $8.3 million jury verdict contending that her replacement as th...

News flash: There’s life beyond the COVID-19 pandemic! In fact, yesterday, the Connecticut Supreme Court released an entirely non-COVID-19 related decision on the topic of “constructive discharge”. I’ve talked about constructive discharge in prior posts, but the new case clarifies nearly two decades of jurisprudence in the area.  Despite the lowering of the bar for employees to raise such claims, employees still have a significant burden to overcome. First off – why is this important? Well, in discrimination cases, an employee has to show an “adverse employment action”.  Normally, that’s a termination of employment.  But sometimes employees quit.  Most of the time, that’s not enough to satisfy an “adverse employment action”.   But in some cases, the employees say that they were compelled to resign — in other words, they were “constructively discharged”. The Supreme...

My unabashed love of the New York Yankees has been well chronicled here on the blog. (Here and here for just a sample.) So imagine my surprise when I did a deeper dive last night into the Supreme Court’s landmark decision yesterday.  There on page ten, Justice Gorsuch digs deep into baseball loyalties for this example: Consider an employer with a policy of firing any woman he discovers to be a Yankees fan. Carrying out that rule because an employee is a woman and a fan of the Yankees is a firing “because of sex” if the employer would have tolerated the same allegiance in a male employee. Or, put another way, it’s ok to fire Yankees fans, so long as all employees who like the Yankees (both male and female) are treated the same. (I’m still waiting for a vociferous dissent from Justice Sotomayor – a devout Yankees fan herself.) Wait, you might say — That’s my private belief! How can I be fired for just liking a baseball team? But obvious...

In the most consequential U.S. Supreme Court case in many years, the Court ruled this morning that Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. You can download the 6-3 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, here. Connecticut has long prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity so the court’s decision will have less of an impact here for LGBT workers.  In fact, back in 2016 the Connecticut District Court already offered these protections for Title VII cases in this state in a decision that I covered back then.  In states without such protection, the new protections now offered to employees nationwide will be significant. And moreover, the message that this case is sending is unmistakable too: The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and  momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions....

The first Supreme Court judgment on employment competition in a century was handed down recently – and it is good news for employers. In Tillman v Egon Zehnder the Court of Appeal appeared to have dealt a fatal blow to a non-competition restriction prohibiting Ms Tillman from being “ interested in” businesses competitive with her employer for a period post-termination on the basis that – absent an express carve-out – this prohibited even a minor shareholding in a competitor, and was therefore an unreasonable restraint of trade, especially because her contract allowed such a holding during her employment. However, the life of the covenant was saved by some amputative surgery in the Supreme Court, which held that the words “ interested in ” could be severed from the clause, leaving the remainder of the restriction bleeding but intact. Lord Justice Wilson’s judgment (which cited cases spanning six centuries and involving such disparate fig...