Articles Posted in Labor & Employment

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6 October 2011

My partner, labor and employment lawyer Scott Brink, has informed us that the California Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in a high-profile labor law case, Brinker Restaurant v. Superior Court, on November 8, 2011. He believes it is likely we will see a decision within the following 90 days.

The outcome could curb a wave of class action lawsuits in California — or provide the fuel for more of them.

At issue in the case is whether California employers must ensure that their employees actually take their meal and rest periods or merely make them available. Here is Scott’s update.

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20 September 2011

On September 10 2011 , we let you know that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is making it harder to stay union free.

As of November 14, 2011, most private sector employers are required, by a controversial new National Labor Relations Board rule, to post a notice advising employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

Now, according to my partner, labor and employment lawyer Scott Brink, the NLRB’s authority to issue the new rule is already the subject of legal challenge.

Because NLRB enforcement of the new rule may be delayed — pending the resolution of a lawsuit challenging the validity of the rule — employers should not rush to post the notice before the November 14, 2011 deadline.

Scott’s brief article below explains what is going on and why you need to pay attention to this important development.

A link to the NLRB’s Form of Notice, which was issued September 14, 2011, may be found at the end of the article.

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10 September 2011

A highly controversial new law, which many employers believe will unfairly foster union organizing, requires that employers post notices of employee rights — including the right to organize, join or discuss the activities of a union. The law goes into effect on November 14, 2011.

Employers must comply with the new rule whether they have a unionized work force or not.

My partner, labor and employment lawyer Scott Brink, has outlined in his article below the requirements the new rule imposes on employers.

Scott and the labor and employment lawyers of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® have represented the hospitality industry in all aspects of labor and employment law including union prevention, collective bargaining negotiations, and defense of unfair labor practice charges before the NLRB. If you have questions about how this new rule will impact your hotel business, we can help.

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12 July 2010

Hotel Lawyer with an alert about the DOL’s historic action targeting hotels.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is taking historic action. With a huge increase in funding and staffing, the DOL is specifically targeting audits and enforcement actions for every hotel, motel, and resort in the U.S. The program will search for violations of overtime rules, minimum wage, and classification of exempt and non-exempt positions. In addition, one of the primary focal points of these audits will be employers with workers holding H-2B visas.

Hotel labor lawyer Marta Fernandez and hotel lawyer, Jim Abrams, both senior members of the JMBM Global Hospitality Group®, say, ” We expect that the DOL compliance audits will cover all of the laws administered by the DOL and WHD including H-2B labor certification wage requirements and other federal laws such as minimum wage, overtime, and family and medical leave.”

In today’s Alert, they also suggest “4 Things that you should do now — Before it is too late.”

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5 January 2009

To say the least, the last year has been a very “interesting” one. Here are our picks for “The Best from HotelLawBlog.com” from 2008. There are some classic pieces here!

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1 December 2008

Hospitality Lawyer with insights on “What you CAN do NOW” . . . before the pending Employee Free Choice Act is adopted and the unions come calling. Today we are going to talk about a monumentally important event facing the hotel industry, that is almost certain to happen with Barack Obama’s election. It is something that will affect virtually every hotel in the United States, and there is probably a very limited window of a few months that you can do something that will have a long lasting benefit for your hotel. But you have to act very soon.

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12 August 2008

Hospitality Lawyer with the 3 most important issues facing the hospitality industry today and what you can do about them. Formed in 1910 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., the American Hotel & Lodging Association is the sole national association representing all sectors and stakeholders in the lodging industry. For almost 100 years, AH&LA has been the leading voice for the hotel industry, providing national advocacy on Capitol Hill — a comprehensive federal governmental affairs program covering legislative and regulatory issues for the lodging industry. (see www.ahla.com)

AH&LA has a lot on its agenda, but when I caught up with AH&LA Chairman, Tom Corcoran, he identified 3 of the most important issues to the hospitality industry and asked that we really focus our attention. Here they are . . .

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Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com 17 April 2007
Hotel Lawyer with landmark labor and employment decision from the California Supreme Court on wage and hour issues. Wage and hour claims are serious matters for employers, because they typically involve class actions with lots of current (and former employees), and the claims can cover a long period of time. They are also particularly bad for the hospitality industry because so many employees are nominally “exempt” employees–managers or assistant managers–by their titles, but not under California legal standards. (See prior postings on www.HotelLawBlog.com under the Topic of “Labor & Employment” such as New law on who is a “supervisor” can even the playing field for employers a bit.)

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Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
3 January 2007
Hotel Lawyer — Top Picks of 2006. Yes, 2006 has been a record year for many in the hospitality industry, and for the hotel lawyers at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro LLP. As we have already given our Outlook for 2007, we thought it might be interesting to look back on our Top Pick articles from 2006 from www.HotelLawBlog.com.

The Top Picks articles are organized by the major TOPICS on the Blog. We generally tried to select just the top two or three articles for each TOPIC. It was a major struggle to decide where to make the cutoff. If you want more information on a particular TOPIC, you can go to www.HotelLawBlog.com, and search for all articles on that TOPIC. To do that, just scroll down the right hand side, and below the (free) subscription and RSS Feed buttons is the Browse search engine that enables you to sort by TOPIC (or date, or key words, etc.).

Here they are . . .

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