Many employers are aware that they could waive the ability to enforce an arbitration agreement if they delay moving to compel arbitration until after they have engaged in significant litigation activities in court, such as filing a motion to dismiss or serving discovery requests. However, in Hernandez v. Universal Protection Services, a Massachusetts Superior
Last week, a divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) in Osborne-Trussell v. Children’s Hospital Corp. ruled in favor of a broad interpretation of the 2014 Domestic Violence and Abuse Leave Act (“DVLA”), a law that provides certain employment protections for victims of domestic violence, including a prohibition against retaliation for seeking or using protected leave.
Preparing the terms of employee compensation can be a resource-intensive task requiring input from stakeholders across numerous departments, including human resources, finance, and legal. However, as the Massachusetts Appeals Court’s recent decision in Alfieri v. Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. demonstrates, investing those resources to complete the task will pay dividends when an employer is faced with
Our colleagues Denise Dadika and Vidaur Durazo of Epstein Becker Green have a new post on the Health Employment and Labor blog that will be of interest to our readers: “Changing Floors: Minimum Wage Increases for Health Leaders to Consider”.
The following is an excerpt:
2021 is set to be a landmark year for
As we previously reported, the Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave (“DFML” or the “Department”) continues to provide guidance as it rolls out the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program (“PFML” or the “law”), which provides eligible workers with partial income replacement benefits for qualifying reasons. As a reminder, beginning January 1
The first COVID-19 vaccines have started being shipped across the U.S. with the expectation that millions of doses will be administered over the next few weeks, with many times more over the coming months. This is unequivocally good news and reason for optimism. Meanwhile, however, the pandemic continues to spread nationwide and the numbers are
In recent years, wage discrimination has been a hot topic and with it, the question of whether employers may rely on a worker’s salary history to justify a pay disparity between male and female employees. In a 2018 case involving the federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”), Rizo v. Yovino, (about which we wrote here
As we have previously reported, since June 2019, the Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave (the “DFML”) has proposed and adopted several “technical changes” and clarifications to the Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave Law (the “PFML”). Our analysis of these proposals and revisions may be found here, here, and
The Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave (“DFML”) continues to provide ongoing substantive and procedural guidance regarding the implementation of the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Program (“PFML”). As previously reported, prior guidance has addressed how to determine if an employer meets the 25-covered individual threshold for reporting purposes, whether to count
New York is the latest state to adopt a law that requires businesses that collect private information on its residents to implement reasonable cybersecurity safeguards to protect that information. New York now joins California, Massachusetts and Colorado in setting these standards. New York’s law mandates the implementation of a data security program, including measures such