Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act requires employers to give employees at least 60 days’ notice when a “mass layoff” is about to occur at a “single site of employment,” which is typically a single location or a group of contiguous work locations.  Courts are beginning to confront the question of what constitutes a “single site of employment” under the WARN Act for employees working remotely, and how remote work policies impact class certification considerations.  Given the prevalence of remote work during the pandemic and the likely continuation of such work arrangements, these decisions are of particular importance to employers considering mass layoffs or facing class actions based on the application of remote work policies or practices.

The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) recently indicated an openness to revisiting the independent contractor standard employed by the Board when assessing whether individuals are covered under the National Labor Relations Act (“Act”).

The National Labor Relations Board indicated in January that it may reconsider its legal standard for assessing whether employer work rules violate the National Labor Relations Act, and invited amicus briefs on the subject.  Several business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, filed briefs on March 8, 2022 urging the Board to maintain its existing standard under The Boeing Co., 365 NLRB No. 154 (2017).

Over the course of the pandemic, California employers have contended with rapidly changing rules on workplace safety. Mask requirements in the workplace have been an especially evolving area, where the rules have not only varied between the federal, state, and local jurisdictions, but were often inconsistent across different state agencies. California has now taken steps, however, to align the state’s new mask mandates for the public as well as in the workplace.

In a bipartisan vote, Congress passed a new law poised to end employers’ ability to require employees to arbitrate claims for sexual harassment or sexual assault through a pre-dispute arbitration agreement.  This new law is the latest in an ongoing series of state and federal laws inspired by the #MeToo movement, and the most significant federal legislation involving the issue of arbitration in recent years.

The California Supreme Court has clarified that state whistleblower retaliation claims should not be evaluated under the McDonnell Douglas test, but rather under the test adopted by the California legislature in 2003, thus clarifying decades of confusion among the courts.

Lost in the weeds of recent COVID-19 news is the increasing number of states and localities that have legalized medicinal and recreational use of marijuana.  Such legalization brings with it varying degrees of worker protections and employer obligations.  Philadelphia, PA and the state of Montana are two of the latest jurisdictions to add their names to the sprouting list of jurisdictions that protect not only medical use, but also recreational use of marijuana.  These protections will undoubtedly usher in a new wave of test cases and compliance questions, particularly as many workplaces shift to remote models.

On February 9, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 114, which reestablishes the state’s COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave requirements. Employers will not be able to simply dust off their 2021 policies and reimplement them, however, because the 2022 law contains some important changes from prior laws.

On January 25, 2022, OSHA withdrew the COVID-19 vaccination and testing Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”), ending the litigation regarding the OSHA vaccine mandate.

HuntonAK Labor and Employment Partners Julia Trankiem and Roland Juarez were selected as 2022 “Minority Leaders of Influence: Attorneys” by the Los Angeles Business Journal.  This year’s selection marks Julia and Roland’s third appearance on the LABJ list!