NLRB Finds Employee Arbitration Agreement Waiving Class Claims Violates Federal Labor Law
In DR Horton, a decision issued on January 3 and applicable to most private sector employers, whether unionized or not, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) held that federal labor law prevents employers from requiring their employees, as a condition of employment, to agree to broad waivers that would deny their right to pursue employment-related class actions both in court and in arbitration, leaving them no forum for pursuing class or collective claims. As a result, an important tool for managing the risk of employment-related litigation has been taken away (for now).
The facts of the case are straightforward. DR Horton, like many employers, required its employees to sign an arbitration agreement as a condition of employment. The agreement required employees to arbitrate all claims arising out of their employment, and precluded arbitrators from issuing class or group relief. As a result, employees were prevented from bringing class or collective actions in any forum. Relying on this agreement, DR Horton refused to arbitrate a class action alleging that it had misclassified certain employees as exempt from the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Not so fast, according to the NLRB. Tracing federal labor law back to its origins, the NLRB found that the filing of a class action “to redress workplace wrongs or improve working conditions” is activity at “the core” of what Congress intended to protect when it enacted the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. This intent, the NLRB reasoned, is reflected in Section 7 of the Act, which gives employees the right to engage in “concerted activities” for the purposes of “mutual aid or protection.” Relying on Section 7, the NLRB found that Employers cannot compel their employees, as a condition of employment, to entirely waive the right to bring class or collective actions.
The NLRB’s ruling in DR Horton clashes with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, which held that arbitration clauses that waive the right to bring class claims entirely (in the commercial contract context) may be lawful and enforceable. But unless and until the courts intervene to resolve this tension, requiring your employees to completely waive the right to bring employment-related class or collective actions - a common feature of arbitration agreements - is probably no longer permissible under federal labor law.
If You're Interested In Learning More, Sign Up For Our Webinar
Stoel Rives is hosting a webinar on January 11, 2012, to address employee arbitration agreements generally and the DR Horton decision in particular. Click here if you're interested in learning more or attending.
Update - New Rule Requires Employers to Post Notice of Employee NLRA Rights
In order to allow more time for legal challenges to its notice-posting rule to be resolved, the National Labor Relations Board has again postponed the rule's effective date, this time to April 30, 2012. Stay tuned.
For additional information regarding the NLRB's new rule and posting requirement, including links to the new rule and the poster employers must post, see our prior post on this topic by following this link.
It's Time to Ensure Compliance with the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act
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Under the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, beginning January 1, 2012, large retailers and manufacturers that do business in California must disclose information on their websites about what they do to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. The new law applies to companies with worldwide gross receipts of over $100 million.
The law provides that if a covered company has a website, it must disclose certain information via a “conspicuous and easily understood link” on the homepage. The company must disclose to what extent, if any, it does each of the following:
- Engages in verification of product supply chains to evaluate and address risks of human trafficking and slavery, specifying if the verification was not conducted by a third party.
- Conducts audits of suppliers to evaluate supplier compliance with company standards for trafficking and slavery in supply chains.
- Requires direct suppliers to certify that materials incorporated into the product comply with the laws regarding slavery and human trafficking.
- Maintains internal accountability standards and procedures for employees or contractors failing to meet company standards regarding slavery and trafficking.
- Provides company employees and management, who have direct responsibility for supply chain management, training on human trafficking and slavery, particularly with respect to mitigating risks within the supply chain of products.
Notably, the law does not require companies to do anything to combat slavery and human trafficking. The law simply requires disclosure of the above information.
Although the law’s exclusive remedy for noncompliance is an action for injunctive relief brought by the Attorney General, the law does not limit remedies available for a violation of any other state or federal law. On an annual basis, the California Franchise Tax Board will submit to the Attorney General a list of companies required to make the disclosure.
Obama Jobs Bill Proposes To Ban Discrimination Against Unemployed
As almost everyone knows, last week President Obama presented a $447 billion jobs bill, called the American Jobs Act, to a joint session of Congress full of proposals designed to stimulate the lagging U.S. economy. What many people probably don't know is that, tucked into the bill, is a provision that would make it unlawful for employers to refuse to hire someone because that person is unemployed. This small part of the stimulus bill would create an entirely new protected class under federal discrimination law—the unemployed person. If enacted it could expose employers to a raft of new employment discrimination lawsuits.
What The Bill Says
Section 375 of the proposed bill actually has several anti-discrimination provisions. First, it prohibits employers and employment agencies from refusing to hire an individual “because of the individual’s status as unemployed,” including prohibiting employers from directing employment agencies to do so. It also contains a broad anti-retaliation provision prohibiting employers from interfering or refusing to hire someone because the person reports a violation of the Act. The Act will provide many of the same remedies available under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act—the same federal law that prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, or sex—including the right to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), or file a lawsuit to recover money damages and attorney fees.
The bill would also prohibit employers and employment agencies from expressly advertising in written job posts that unemployed persons are automatically disqualified from applying.
The Rub: Full Employment...For Employment Lawyers
While the bill expressly states that it is not intended to preclude employers from considering an individual’s employment history or even from “examining the reasons underlying an individual’s status as unemployed,” that subtle distinction will be a small comfort to employers. Employers routinely scrutinize employment history, and employment “gaps” on a resume have always been a red flag to hiring managers. Under this new law, however, employers would need to walk a very fine line between scrutinizing only the “reasons underlying” unemployment, while avoiding letting the fact the person is unemployed to begin with affect a hiring decision.
Those types of mental gymnastics are not only difficult for hiring managers to keep straight while reviewing job applicants, the distinction will be even harder to prove in court if the employer is later sued. As a practical matter, any unemployed person rejected from a job could demonstrate a prima facie claim for discrimination simply by showing he or she was unemployed and then didn’t get the job. Further, the cases will invariably turn on "yes you did, no I didn't" factual disputes about the hiring decision: did the employer make the decision because of reasons underlying the person's unemployment (lawful) or simply because the person was unemployed (unlawful)? Because of those subtle factual nuances, and procedural rules that presume the truth of a plaintiff's allegations until trial, it could be virtually impossible to get even baseless claims dismissed before trial, such as at summary judgment. That makes defending those cases much more difficult and expensive.
While much remains unsettled about the state of the U.S. economy, including whether Congress will even pass the American Jobs Act, one thing is very certain. If the current anti-discrimination provision in the American Jobs Act passes, employers will be seeing a lot more discrimination claims from a whole new protected class of protected people--the unhired unemployed.
California: "Suitable Seating" Class Actions on the Rise
California employers need to be mindful of a new kind of wage-hour class action – class claims arising from the “suitable seating” requirements of the California Industrial Welfare Commission’s wage orders.
The wage orders set forth what employers must do with respect to employees’ wages, hours and working conditions. There are 17 wage orders, applying to every industry and occupation. Most of the wage orders provide that “all working employees shall be provided with suitable seats when the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of such seats.” Unfortunately, the wage orders do not define “suitable seats” or “reasonably permits.”
In Bright v. 99 Cents Only Stores, a cashier at a discount retail chain filed a class action against her employer alleging that the company did not provide cashiers with “suitable seating.” Unlike the typical wage-hour class action, this case does not involve a claim that employees were underpaid. Instead, the plaintiff seeks to use the alleged wage order violation to trigger the penalty provisions of the California Private Attorney General Act (PAGA), which amount to $100 for each aggrieved employee for the first violation and $200 per pay period for each aggrieved employee for subsequent violations. The Court of Appeal recently ruled that the plaintiff can proceed with her case and, if she proves the employer did not provide suitable seating, recover PAGA penalties.
The retail industry is the first industry in the cross-hairs of the plaintiffs’ bar for seating violation class actions, but employers in the hospitality and manufacturing industries should expect to be targeted soon. The decision of the Bright court permitting PAGA penalties for seating violations may lead to class actions for violations of other obscure provisions of the wage orders, such as requirements relating to changing rooms, resting facilities and workplace temperatures. California employers should take immediate measures to ensure they are in compliance with the seating requirements and other provisions of the California wage orders.
President Obama to Sign Jobs Bill Today
President Obama is today expected to sign the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act, which in its final form passed The House of Representatives 217-201 on March 4 and the Senate 68-29 on March 17. Click here to download the final version of the HIRE Act.
Key provisions of the HIRE Act include:
- An exemption from Social Security payroll taxes for private employers for each worker hired in 2010 who previously had been unemployed for at least 60 days;
- A $1,000 income tax credit, or a credit of 6.2% of total wages paid, for private employers for each new employee hired in 2010 and retained for at least 52 weeks and claimed on the employer's 2011 income tax return;
- An extension of the small business “expensing” tax break for one year, allowing small businesses to continue writing off up to $250,000 of certain capital expenditures instead of depreciating them over time;
- A $4.6 billion Build America Bonds program, which would provide an optional direct subsidy payment in lieu of a tax credit for tax credit bonds issued for certain school and energy projects; and
- Expanded federal aid for highway programs estimated to save or create 1 million jobs.
As previously reported in the Stoel Rives World of Employment, a slightly different version of the HIRE Act passed through the Senate on February 24. While the bill was in the House, several changes were to the Act, including increased funding to the Build America Bonds program and greater flexibility to the hiring tax credit program.
Changes Coming to the WARN Act?
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification ("WARN") Act is getting a lot of airplay these days; that's the federal law that requires qualifying employers to give 60 days’ notice of a plant closing, a layoff of 500 or more people at one location, or a cut of at least one-third of the work force at a site. But many critics of the WARN act think it doesn't go far enough because it covers only the largest layoffs by the largest employers. Now, some economists are calling for a tougher, broader WARN Act.
We'll be watching to see if these calls for revising the WARN Act gain traction in Congress this term. For now, there are resources out there to help you cope with the current version of WARN:
- For a basic overview of the law, here's a basic WARN Act Fact Sheet.
- For more detailed information, download the Employer's Guide to the WARN Act (a great resource and our personal favorite).
- Next, if your layoff is caused by an "act of God," you might want to download the WARN Act Natural Disaster Fact Sheet.
- And finally, you can read what the DOL is telling your employees: the Workers' Guide to the WARN Act, and for Spanish-speaking employees, the Guía para el Trabajadores.
