Posts from December 2015.

Readers of this update know that Illinois radically changed restrictive covenant law in Fifield v. Premier Dealer Services Inc., 2013 IL App. (1st) 120327.  In Fifield, the court required two years of at-will employment as consideration for a post-employment non-solicitation or non-compete clause entered into at the outset of employment, even if the employee voluntarily quit. The Illinois Supreme Court declined to review Fifield despite the requests of business groups and employer advocates. Since then, Fifield has remained controversial, with one appellate ...

Everyone rings in the New Year differently – some with a party with friends and family, sparkling grape juice with their kids, traveling to a new destination or watching the ball drop in Times Square. Whatever tradition you choose to bring in the new year, the one thing we can all count on is that there will be new employment laws waiting for you on your desk come January 2nd (if not already).

Paid sick leave laws in many states are requiring that you pay your employees to take time off when ill, to care for an ill family member, or to go to the doctor. The federal Department of Labor is even ...

Late yesterday afternoon, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced it was extending the due dates for certain 2015 Affordable Care Act (ACA) information reporting requirements. The welcome delay gives employers almost two additional months to furnish statements to employees and close to three additional months to file required returns with the IRS.

Specifically, Notice 2016-4 extends:

  • the due date for providing individual Forms 1095-C and 1095-B to employees from February 1, 2016, to March 31, 2016
  • the due date for filing Forms 1094-B, 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS from ...

Employers are receiving a temporary reprieve from the controversial “Cadillac Tax” on health plans as part of a large spending and tax bill signed into law by President Obama on Friday, December 18, 2015. The Consolidated Appropriations Act (the “Act”) delays the effective date of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) excise tax on so-called high cost health plans, known as the “Cadillac Tax,” until January 1, 2020.

The Cadillac Tax, previously scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2018, is a 40% excise tax on employers and insurers who offer health insurance plans that ...

Have you noticed that an employee’s requests for leave tend to occur on a Friday or Monday?  Is an employee suddenly unable to work immediately before or after holidays? It is not unusual for employers to experience FMLA abuse, especially around the holidays. The following are a few practices that can help you combat FMLA abuse:

  1. Be Vigilant and Be Aware – Having a system that tracks when employees take FMLA leave can help you identify patterns of abuse and act quickly to investigate and address them appropriately.
  1. Control Scheduling – FMLA regulations require that absences for ...

A Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action lawsuit, filed over five years ago by Chicago police officers who claimed they were not paid overtime for their off-duty use of work-issued BlackBerrys, went to a bench trial in August, and the federal judge recently ruled in the City’s favor.  Although the court, in Allen, et al. v. City of Chicago, Case No. 10-C-3183 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 10, 2015), found that the police officers were performing compensable overtime work on their devices while off-duty, the police officers failed to prove that there was an unwritten policy to deny them ...

Last month, in Porter v. Houma Terrebonne Housing Authority Board of Commissioners (“HTHA”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that a former employee’s claim of unlawful retaliation based on complaints of sexual harassment should proceed to trial.

Such a ruling is not necessarily unusual, but what makes this one unique is  the court held that an employer’s refusal to let an employee rescind her resignation can be an “adverse employment action”—one of the three prima facie elements of a claim for unlawful retaliation under Title VII of the Civil ...

The current version of the Form I-9 is set to expire on 3/31/16. In advance of the expiration, USCIS has issued proposed changes to the Form I-9 for public comment. The new version would allow employers to complete the form on their computer with some imbedded prompts assisting them in the completion of the form. This is an attempt to reduce technical errors commonly made on the Form I-9. Employers would still be able to complete the form by hand if they choose to do so.

Some of the proposed changes included are:

  • Electronic checks on certain fields to ensure accuracy
  • Drop down lists for ...

On December 3, the Federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin) affirmed dismissal of a failure to accommodate claim brought by an employee bumped from a job assignment that accommodated his disability after his employer opened that assignment to seniority-based bidding pursuant to the terms of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

After a series of injuries and several extended leaves of absence, the employee was released to return to work with permanent restrictions that prevented him from performing many of the physically demanding ...

On December 1, 2015, in conjunction with World AIDS Day, the EEOC issued two new guidance documents addressing the legal rights available to employees with HIV/AIDS under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).

While these documents specifically reference HIV and AIDS, the reality is that this new guidance has tremendous value to human resources professionals and other management decision-makers who may be faced with accommodation requests based on virtually any medical condition. Moreover, although the guidance is not specifically directed to employers, again the ...

Welcome to the Labor and Employment Law Update where attorneys from Amundsen Davis blog about management side labor and employment issues. 

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