Is Social Media Eroding Nonsolicitation Agreements?

Are former employees in violation of non-solicitation agreements by using social media to contact their employer’s customers or co-workers? Florham Park Counsel, Lawrence Del Rossi, recently published an article in Law360 discussing the emerging trends regarding the role that social media plays in restrictive covenant case.  He also provides practical guidance to employment law practitioners.

Read “Is Social Media Eroding Nonsolicitation Agreements?” here.

New Guidance Regarding Employee Handbooks Part Six: Ensuring Conflict of Interest Rules Don’t Inhibit Protected Concerted Activity

This post is the sixth in a series providing guidance on federal rules regarding permissible and impermissible employer handbook policies and rules. See Guidance Regarding Confidentiality Rules Here, Employee Conduct Rules, Rules Related to Company Logos, Copyright, and Trademark,  Rules Restricting Photography and Recording and Rules Restricting Employees From Leaving Work.  While the recent guidance was issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), (found here) this guidance is applicable to both unionized and non-unionized employers. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) restricts all employers from issuing policies or rules – even if well-intentioned – that inhibit employees from engaging in activities protected by the act, such as discussing wages, criticizing management, publicly communicating about working conditions and discussing unionization.

Conflict of Interest Rules: A Balancing Act

Naturally, all employers would like to prevent their employees from engaging in activities that are in conflict with the employers’ interest. However, there is a great deal of potentially conflicting employee activity that is protected by Section 7 of the NLRA, such as protesting in front of the company, organizing a boycott, or soliciting support for a union during non-work time. Accordingly, if an employer’s conflict-of-interest rules can reasonably be read to prohibit protected concerted activity, the NLRB will view them with great suspicion.

The NLRB provides a couple examples of conflict-of-interest rules that were found to be impermissibly overbroad. These include:

• Policy banning employees from engaging in “any action” that is “not in the best interest of” the employer.

• Policy providing that, “[b]ecause you are now working in one of [employer’s] restaurants, it is important to realize that you have an up close and personal look at our business every day. With this in mind, you should recognize your responsibility to avoid any conflict between your personal interests and those of the Company. A conflict of interest occurs when our personal interests interfere – or appear to interfere – with our ability to make sound business decisions on behalf of [the employer].”

Examples of Permissible Conflict of Interest Rules

The NLRB advises that employers ensure their conflict-of-interest rules do not impinge upon protected Section 7 activity by including specific examples of prohibited behavior. The NLRB explains that when a rule clarifies that it is limited to the employer’s legitimate business interests, employees will understand that it is not banning Section 7 activity.

Some examples of lawful conflict-of-interest rules include:

• A policy that provided two pages of examples of what was considered a conflict of interest, instructing employees to do such things as “avoid outside employment with a[n employer] customer, supplier, or competitor, or having a significant financial interest with one of these entities.”

• Rules prohibiting employees from giving, offering, or promising, “directly or indirectly, anything of value to any representative” of “any person, firm, corporation, or government agency that sells or provides a service to, purchases from, or competes with” the employer.

• Rules in a section of a handbook dealing entirely with business ethics banning employees from “activities, investments or associations that compete with the Company, interferes with one’s judgment concerning the Company’s best interests, or exploits one’s position with the Company for personal gains.”

In sum, employers should take great care to ensure their conflict-of-interest rules provide sufficient clarifying examples and context to indicate that such rules are intended only to protect the employer’s legitimate business interests, and not to inhibit activities protected by Section 7.

Bad News for Whistleblowers: New Jersey Supreme Court Rules Theft of Confidential Documents for Self-Help in Employment Lawsuit Can Result in Jail Time

Does an employee have an unfettered right to take confidential documents from her employer to use in her discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against the employer? Not in New Jersey. The New Jersey Supreme Court recently ruled in State v. Ivonne Saavedra that the theft of a company’s confidential documents for self-help in an employment lawsuit can result in jail time.

Florham Park partner Lynne Anderson recently published an article in Law360 discussing the decision and its ramifications for employers and would-be whistleblowers.

Read “Woe To The NJ Whistleblower Who Whisks Away Documents” here.

An Employer’s Obligation to Follow up after Receiving a Medical Certification: Greater Than You Might Think

If an employee seeks FMLA leave, she typically needs to ask for it. Likewise, it goes without saying that if an employee is asked to provide a medical certification in support of her request (something employers are free to seek) and fails to provide that information – or worse provides a certification indicating that she does not qualify for FMLA leave – the employer has no obligation to provide that leave. Or does it?

In Hansler v. Lehigh Valley Hospital Network, the plaintiff, Ms. Hansler, asked for a two-day per week, one-month leave of absence to deal with certain medical issues, a condition that was diagnosed after her separation as diabetes. In support of her request, Ms. Hansler submitted a medical certification that referred to the length of the requested leave, but did not describe the nature or duration of her condition. The hospital network, instead of asking for clarification of the certification, terminated Ms. Hansler’s employment after she took several days off, contending that because Ms. Hansler was requesting only limited time off, her condition did not qualify as a “serious health condition” under the FMLA and entitle her to leave.

Ms. Hansler thereafter brought suit claiming that the hospital network interfered with her FMLA rights by terminating her employment and retaliated against her for requesting the leave, claims that the trial court dismissed on the ground that Ms. Hansler’s medical certification indicated on its face (by virtue the duration of leave requested) that Ms. Hansler did not qualify for FMLA leave. On appeal, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. The Court, in a 2-1 decision, held that the hospital network, rather than just acting on the information in the certification, should have asked Ms. Hansler for additional information, even though on its face the information indicated that Ms. Hansler did not qualify for FMLA leave.

In one sense the decision is predictable and understandable. After all, the hospital network with its sophisticated HR capabilities could easily have reached out to Ms. Hansler and asked her for additional information via an updated certification and Ms. Hansler, for her part, was later diagnosed with diabetes, a condition that does qualify as a “serious health condition.” Yet, the decision is not without concern. FMLA regulations provide that an employer “shall advise an employee whenever the employer finds a certification incomplete or insufficient, and shall state in writing what additional information is necessary to make the certification complete and sufficient.” But FMLA case law also holds that, where the certification indicates that the employee does not have a serious health condition, the employer need not follow up further with the employee about her need for leave. And, here, there was at least a decent argument that that was the case given the limited leave requested by Ms. Hansler.

So what is an employer to do when faced with an incomplete FMLA certification? If the certification clearly indicates that no leave is needed or that the employee otherwise clearly is not entitled to leave, it seems fair to say that the employer can rely on the certification and deny the leave request. If, however, the certification indicates that a leave of any length is needed, the employer would be wise to follow up with the employee and provide her an opportunity to submit additional information within the seven-day period contemplated in the FMLA regulations.

The DOL Announces Proposed Revisions to FLSA Regulations Doubling the Minimum Salary Requirement for Exempt Employees

More than 15 months after President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Labor “to propose revisions to modernize and streamline the existing [FLSA] overtime regulations,” the Department of Labor on June 30, 2015 finally issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) detailing its proposed revisions. These proposals include:

(1) Increasing the minimum salary requirement from $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to an expected $970 per week ($50,440 per year) in 2016;

(2) Increasing the minimum annual compensation requirement to qualify as a “highly-compensated” exempt worker from $100,000 to $122,148 annually;

(3) Creating a mechanism for automatically updating the minimum salary and compensation levels, by tying them to either (a) a fixed percentile of earnings for full-time salaried workers or (b) changes in the CPI-U (i.e., the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers).

Note that these are proposed revisions; they are not yet law. The NPRM will be published in the Federal Register and the public will be invited to comment on the revisions for a certain period (likely 60 days). After the comment period ends, the Department of Labor (DOL) may consider the comments; possibly make further revisions to the regulations; and publish a “Final Rule” in the Federal Register with an effective date on which it becomes law. Considering this timeline, it is likely that new regulations will not become law until mid-2016 or later. Usually, however, the “Final Rule” does not differ significantly from the NPRM, and thus employers now have a preview of the regulatory landscape they will face in 2016.

The DOL was widely expected to raise the minimum salary requirement, which has not been updated since 2004. However, most predicted that the DOL would couple a more modest (but still significant) increase with changes to the various “duties tests.”  This speculation was based upon remarks made by the president and the Secretary of Labor indicating a concern that too many employees, particularly retail managers, were exempt under the regulations even though they spent a large portion of their time performing non-exempt duties.

The DOL has not, however, proposed any specific revisions to the duties tests. Essentially, the DOL seems to believe that a dramatic increase in the minimum salary and compensation requirements will, standing alone, ameliorate concerns about potential misclassification, noting in the NPRM that “[a]djusting the salary level upward to account for the absence of a more rigorous duties test will ensure that the salary threshold serves as a more clear line of demarcation between employees who are entitled to overtime and those who are not, and will reduce the number of white collar employees who may be misclassified . . .”

Even though the DOL has proposed fewer revisions than expected, it is nonetheless “seeking comments” on other potential changes. For example, the DOL has reiterated the concern that “in some instances the current tests may allow exemption of employees who are performing such a disproportionate amount of nonexempt work that they are not [white collar] employees in any meaningful sense” and it is thus “seeking comments on whether the [duties] tests are working as intended.” Similarly, it seeks comments on whether to allow nondiscretionary bonuses and incentive payments to satisfy a portion of the salary basis test. Revisions to the regulations in these areas may possibly appear in the Final Rule.

Although a Final Rule will not take effect until 2016, employers should now start evaluating their employee classification policies to ensure compliance with, at the least, the expected increase in the minimum salary requirements. Given the magnitude of the increase, it’s likely that most employers will need to transition some employees, for whom meeting the new salary basis test is not feasible, from a salary to hourly role.

Should you have questions about this alert, please contact the authors or any other member of Drinker Biddle’s Labor and Employment Group.

EEOC’s Proposed Rule on Employee Health Wellness Programs

On June 19, 2015, public comments were submitted for the EEOC’s much anticipated proposed rule to amend the Title I of the ADA to clarify how the statute applies to certain employee health wellness programs. The EEOC’s stated goal for the rule is to harmonize wellness programs’ use of incentives to encourage participation with the ADA’s requirement that disability-related inquiries and medical exams as part of a wellness program must be voluntary and not penalizing in nature.

The Issue: Incentivizing Wellness Programs

The ADA generally prohibits employers from making disability-related inquiries or requiring medical examinations, but provides an exception for voluntary medical examinations, including voluntary medical histories, which are part of a wellness program.  The wellness program is voluntary so long as an employer neither requires participation nor penalizes employees who do not participate.  Prior to the EEOC’s proposed rule, neither the statute nor EEOC regulations addressed the extent to which incentives for participation might affect the voluntary nature of a wellness program, but recent lawsuits filed by the Commission caused concern among employers regarding whether incentivizing wellness programs to any extent violated the ADA.

The Solution: The Proposed Rule

The EEOC drafted the proposed rule to be in line with current ACA and HIPAA regulations regarding wellness programs generally and the use of incentives specifically.  The main points of the rule are as follows:

  • Incentives – Employers are allowed to offer incentives up to 30 percent of the cost of employee-only coverage to employees who participate in a wellness program without violating the “voluntary” requirement of the ADA. E.g., if the total cost of coverage paid by both the employer and employee for self-only coverage is $5,000, the maximum value of incentives for an employee under that plan is $1,500.
  • Confidentiality – Wellness programs that are part of a group health plan may generally comply with their obligation to keep medical information confidential by complying with the HIPAA. Specifically, medical information collected as part of a wellness program may be disclosed to employers only in aggregate form that does not reveal the employee’s identity.
  • Reasonable Accommodations – Employer must provide reasonable accommodations that enable employees with disabilities to participate and to earn whatever incentives the employer offers.  E.g., an employer would need to provide wellness program materials in large print or Braille if necessary to accommodate a participant with vision impairment.

While there is not yet an anticipated date for a final rule, the Commission encourages employers to start complying with the proposed rule now.

 

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