Posted February 15, 2024 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As we previously reported here, effective January 1, 2024, Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (the “Act”) was amended to impose new, administratively burdensome job opportunity, post-selection, and career progression notice requirements on employers. Colorado’s Department of Labor and …
Posted July 18, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As we previously reported here, in 2019 Colorado passed a pay transparency law requiring employers to (1) disclose in their job postings the pay ranges and benefits for their Colorado jobs, and (2) make information about promotional opportunities known to …
Posted April 13, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As we posted about previously, in September 2022, California passed significant expansions of its pay transparency and pay data reporting laws, but many key questions about the law’s scope and application remained unclear. Payscale Posting Clarifications On the pay scale …
Posted February 1, 2023 with Tags Firm News
For employers, there is little guidance on using emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools in employment decisions. Thanks to The Artificial Intelligence Technical Advisory Committee (AI TAC)—which included NJL employment attorney Mark Girouard—employers now have guidance on addressing EEO and DE&I …
Posted December 18, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Starting January 1, 2023, California employers will need to comply with expanded pay transparency obligations. And, starting May 10, 2023 (and annually thereafter), they will need to make changes to their annual California pay data reports. While those deadlines are …
Posted June 6, 2022
A recent amendment to Washington law will require employers to disclose information about pay and other benefits in postings for jobs in the state. This new affirmative disclosure requirement, which applies to employers with 15 or more employees, becomes effective on January 1, 2023.
Posted November 16, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Over the last few years, employers across the United States have become accustomed to dealing with a patchwork of state pay equity requirements, including some that give employees the right to request and openly discuss and disclose their wages. A handful of states and municipalities have gone farther, enacting pay transparency schemes under which employers must affirmatively disclose the pay ranges for a position. States that impose some kind of pay transparency requirement include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, Rhode Island, Washington. These states, and others, have recently adopted new or revised pay equity statutes imposing additional requirements upon employers.
Posted September 9, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Effective October 1, 2021, Connecticut employers will face a host of new pay transparency obligations. In addition, they will need to analyze—and defend—pay difference under a new, more expansive framework. With respect to transparency, the new law will require employers …
Posted May 24, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Many states across the country have adopted new or revised equal pay laws in an effort to address pay inequities in the workplace. Illinois joined that list with March 22, 2021 amendments to the Illinois Equal Pay Act of 2003 and Illinois Business Corporation Act, which took immediate effect. The amendments require employers to assemble, submit, and, in some cases, even publish demographic and pay equity data.
Posted March 3, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Employers that provided EEO-1 Component Two pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or are currently preparing to provide data to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) as part of California’s new pay data reporting requirement, are doubtless interested in learning how the agencies will use the data. One likely answer is that the EEOC and DFEH will use employer’s data to identify instances of “intersectional” pay discrimination. That is, claims of pay discrimination that involve the combination of two or more protected classes (such as race and gender), which are also commonly referred to as “gender-plus” claims (e.g., gender-plus-race).
Posted February 26, 2021 with Tags COVID-19, COVID-19 for Employers
Minneapolis employers in the hospitality industry will likely soon have to contend with a new set of worker protection laws. The Minneapolis City Council is currently considering a citywide Hospitality Worker Right to Recall Ordinance, which would require employers to rehire workers previously terminated due to the Coronavirus pandemic. If adopted, the Ordinance will go into effect on May 1, 2021. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Legislature is considering a similar right to recall law, which would apply statewide to a larger group of employers.
Posted June 4, 2020 with Tags Employers, Sexual Harassment Claims
On Wednesday, June 5, 2020, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Kenneh vs. Homeward Bound, Inc., upholding the “severe or pervasive” standard applied to sexual harassment claims due to hostile work environment under the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA). The standard, adopted from parallel federal Title VII litigation, has been applied to hostile work environment claims under the MHRA for over 30 years. It confines actionable sexual harassment to severe (meaning bad) or pervasive (meaning frequent) conduct that sufficiently alters the conditions of employment.
Posted April 7, 2020 with Tags Employers, AI in hiring, COVID-19, COVID-19 for Employers
Since shelter-in-place and self-isolation orders have become the norm around the country, more employers are utilizing video interview tools in lieu of interviewing candidates in person. These tools allow HR and hiring teams to continue to assess talent with little interruption. But Nilan Johnson Lewis labor and employment attorney Mark Girouard urges companies to keep certain legal requirements in mind before turning on the cameras.
Posted March 6, 2020
New York City is considering proposed legislation that would regulate the use of artificial intelligence in hiring.
Posted March 2, 2020 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
The rising tide of state pay equity legislation shows no sign of abating, with several new laws set to become effective in 2020 and 2021. Many of these laws differ from the federal Equal Pay Act by defining comparable work more broadly, limiting the factors on which employers can rely to justify pay disparities, and imposing additional penalties. A handful of the laws also attempt to balance these new burdens on employers by creating “safe harbors” for those who proactively assess and address their pay gaps.
Posted October 4, 2019
Approximately two years ago, a number of employers received charges of discrimination alleging that they discriminated against applicants by restricting the recipients of employment advertisements on Facebook. The EEOC just found reasonable cause on the first seven such charges; and more probable cause determinations seem likely in the near future. Employers who have not yet been targeted should take steps now to prepare.
Posted June 11, 2019 with Tags algorithmic bias, artificial intelligence in hiring, AI in hiring
As this Harvard Business Review article thoughtfully explores, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to decrease gender bias in hiring if it is properly trained and used...or to replicate existing workplace biases if it is not. With more employers using AI and other big data solutions in hiring, lawmakers and enforcement agencies, as well as plaintiffs' law firms, are increasingly focused on issues of “algorithmic bias.”
Posted June 4, 2019 with Tags Mark Girouard, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence in hiring, AI in hiring
The Illinois legislature passed a bill on May 29, 2019, that would limit employers’ ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) in hiring. It seems likely that Governor Pritzker will sign it, since it passed unanimously in both houses.
Posted May 28, 2019
Plaintiffs’ wage-and-hour class action lawyers are constantly looking for new groups of employees whom they can claim are inappropriately classified as exempt. In previous decades, plaintiffs’ lawyers focused on mortgage adjusters, truck drivers, and assistant store managers. In 2019, plaintiffs’ lawyers are directing their attention to another group of employees: home health clinicians.
Posted May 21, 2019
Wage-and-hour class litigation tends to come in waves. In 2019, we are seeing another wave gather on the horizon: misclassification collective actions alleging that companies have improperly classified at-the-elbow (“ATE”) support workers as contractors and thus denied them the overtime required under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and parallel state laws.
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