Earlier this summer, we reported on ground-breaking legislation in New Jersey that requires hotels with more than 100 guest rooms to supply hotel employees assigned to work in a guest room alone with a free panic button device and to adhere to a specific protocol upon activation of a panic button device by a hotel
By Michael Kun
Several years ago, employees in California began filing class action lawsuits against their employers alleging violations of the “suitable seating” provision buried in the state’s Wage Orders. The unique provision requires some employers to provide “suitable seating” to some employees when the “nature of their work” would “reasonably permit it.”
The use
When hoteliers are considering purchasing, selling or remodeling hotels, one of the most overlooked issues during the due diligence and planning phases relates to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act
Continue Reading How Hoteliers Must Comply With WARN
Our colleague Kara M. Maciel of Epstein Becker Green wrote a wage and hour update in this month’s Take 5 labor and employment newsletter.
Here’s a preview of the five items:
1. IRS Will Begin Taxing a Restaurant’s Automatic Gratuities as Service Charges
2. The New DOL Secretary, Tom Perez, Spells Out the WHD’s
By: Kara M. Maciel
The following is a selection from the Firm’s October Take 5 Views You Can Use which discusses recent developments in wage hour law affecting the hospitality industry.
IRS Will Begin Taxing a Restaurant’s Automatic Gratuities as Service Charges
Many restaurants include automatic gratuities on the checks of guests with large parties
By: Kara M. Maciel
Many restaurants include automatic gratuities on guests’ checks with large parties to ensure servers get fair tips. This method allows the restaurant to calculate an automatic gratuity or tip into the total bill, but it takes away the customer’s discretion in choosing whether and/or how much to tip the server. As a result
On September 18, 2013, our hospitality practice attorneys, Kara Maciel and Mark Trapp, have the pleasure of speaking at the Lodging Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona on key financial and legal issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act impacting hotel owners and managers when acquiring, selling, developing or managing properties.
Under the 2010 ADA Standards, which
By: Kara Maciel
Last week, I had the honor of attending the Resort Hotel Association’s (“RHA”) Annual Conference at The Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. RHA is comprised of 130 independently-owned resorts, hotels, city clubs and spas in the United States and specializes in insurance programs that address the risks unique to the lodging industry. For
By Adam C. Abrahms and Steven M. Swirsky
In another major defeat for President Obama’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found that the Board lacked the authority to issue a 2011 rule which would have required all employers covered by the
By: Allen B. Roberts
I wrote the February 2013 version of Take 5 Views You Can Use, a newsletter published by the Labor and Employment practice of Epstein Becker Green. In it, I discuss an alternative view of five topics that are likely to impact hospitality employers in 2013 and beyond. One topic involved the potential for