Compliance Stuff

  On January 16, 2025, just days before transferring power to the new administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) issued updated   Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers   (Guidelines) aimed at addressing business practices that impact workers. The guidelines reflect the former administration’s commitment to protecting labor markets from what it perceived as anticompetitive conduct . The timing of their release and the Trump administration’s stance, however, suggest that enforcement may not be as aggressive under the Trump administration as it would have been under the Biden administration. Overview of the New Antitrust Guidelines The FTC and DOJ’s updated Guidelines focus on anticompetitive practices in labor markets, such as wage-fixing, no-poach agreements, and other collusive behaviors that impact workers. These guidelines build on prior efforts, including the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource P...

  Real World Impact :   A recent New Jersey Superior Court decision interpreting the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA) may require New Jersey employers to defend an employee’s employment-related claims before both a judge and arbitrator. Background New Jersey Bergen County Superior Court Judge John O’Dwyer recently ruled in  Paton v. Davis Saperstein  that some employee claims against an employer must be arbitrated, but other claims relating to sexual harassment had to be litigated. As explained below, the court’s decision on how to apply the federal EFAA is contrary to court decisions in other states. In 2022, in response to the #MeToo movement, President Biden signed the EFAA, which amends the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to prohibit mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment and assault claims. Specifically, the law renders a pre-dispute arbitration agreement or joint action waiver unenforceable in a case that ...

During the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the Board) stringently reviewed employee handbooks of nonunionized employers to determine whether particular policies infringed on employees’ rights to engage in concerted activity protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the Act). While the Trump Board relaxed such scrutiny, the Biden Board has returned to the approach taken Obama era with a vengeance. A recent decision from an administrative law judge (ALJ) for the Board highlights the NLRB’s aggressive stance of invalidating employers’ workplace rules if they result in any potential infringement on an employee’s concerted activity. Starbucks Corp. v. Workers United, Case 28-CA-289622, slip op. (ALJ June 7, 2024) , arises out of a union’s attempt to organize Starbucks employees and the company’s termination of several employees and other alleged unfair labor practices occurring at several Phoenix-area stores in order to curb union ...