Labor & Employment Developments Blog

I know I just posted about the NFL but they keep doing things that are instructive to those of us with an interest in employment law.  During last week’s games, an unusual number of players were injured by blows to the head.  As a result, some fines were levied, including one to a Steelers player named James Harrison.

I ran across an article in the USA Today entitled “What did Brett Favre do wrong? Legal experts uncertain.”  For those of you who don’t follow football, Favre allegedly made advances toward a female employee of the New York Jets football team when he was a member of the Jets.  The advances included messages on Myspace, voice messages and x-rated photos allegedly e-mailed or texted by Favre.  Bearing in mind that I have no information apart from what has been reported in the media, this situation does not really seem that mysterious to me.

According to the latest news, jobs have dropped by another 95,000 in the past month and unemployment continues to hover at 9.6%.  In short, things do not appear to be improving and it is likely that we will continue to see workforce reductions until they do.

I read an interesting post this week at the HR Observations blog that addressed what to do when the victim of alleged harassment is a human resources employee.  In considering how to craft a harassment policy that would provide a solution for the HR/victim scenario, the suggestions centered on involving an outside investigator in the process.  Possible outsiders included: a member of the Board of Directors; an outside employment attorney; or an HR consultant.

In the last week, both in practice and in my daily review of labor and employment law websites and blogs, two issues have come up so frequently, I feel compelled to blog about them myself.

An issue that seems to come up weekly in my practice is whether employers may monitor employee e-mail, text messages and internet use.

If you follow the news, you’ve probably heard about the resurgence of bedbug infestations around the country...  Unfortunately, the bedbug problem has moved beyond hotels and into theaters, retail stores and the workplace.

As we head into the long weekend, I suspect that very few people contemplate the meaning of Labor Day.

In my last post, I discussed the pros and cons of arbitration of employment disputes, concluding that the pros outweigh the cons. I also noted that the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would ban forced arbitration in employment disputes, is looming on the horizon. I ended with the question: What should you do if the Arbitration Fairness Act passes? As promised, here are a few suggestions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a huge proponent of arbitration of employment disputes as beneficial to employers. Frankly, I do not understand why more employers do not use arbitration. After some internet research on the topic, I have identified the following commonly stated pros and cons of arbitration.