Rojgar Job News

“President Trump is a Big Fat Idiot” or, for that matter, “Secretary Clinton is a Sore Loser.” Let’s suppose you see one of your employees tweeting one of these expressions on Twitter during non-work hours from a personal account. Can you discipline or even fire your employee over that tweet? That, in essence, is at the heart of an issue that has been circulating in the sports pages (and in the President’s press briefings) over the last week due to the tweets of ESPN Sportscenter Anchor Jemele Hill from her personal account that were critical of the President. The New York Times, in fact, ran a story on Saturday discussing the legal ramifications; it was nice to be quoted in the article. While that article does a good job of summarizing the law in part, there’s a bit more to the story that is useful exploring (however briefly) in a blog post. First off, people do not generally have a First Amendment protection for things that that they say that ...

“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...

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...

With Independence Day nearly upon us (and with many offices on skeleton crews this week), I thought I would take a very brief look back at a case that has particular relevance to the Grand Old Flag and displays of patriotism in the workplace. If you’ve never read about Cotto v. United Technologies Corp., you should. It’s a long-forgotten Connecticut Supreme Court case from 1999 that is a cornerstone opinion in the area of free speech in the private workplace. The basic facts are as follows: The plaintiff 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 or exerting pressure on employees to display the American flag. After a suspension, he was ...