Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP is pleased to announce that labor and employment attorneys Ryan Bates, Ryan Glasgow, and Alyson Brown have been recognized by their peers as members of Virginia Business magazine’s 2023 Legal Elite.

Washington, D.C. is the latest in a growing list of jurisdictions to require employers to have “pay transparency” in job postings. Starting in June of 2024, Washington, D.C. will require all employers with at least one employee in the District to post the minimum and maximum projected salary in all job listings or advertisements. The salary projections must be the lowest and highest salary or hourly pay the employer “in good faith believes” it would pay for the role.

The U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) recently published a final rule on the definition of “independent contractor” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on January 9, 2024. This rule introduces a six-factor "economic realities" test, replacing the 2021 rule and aiming to bring clarity to the classification of workers as independent contractors or employees.

On December 22, 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD), General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) published a final rule that could have consequential effects for federal construction contractors and subcontractors.  The rule, which implements President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14063, directs agencies awarding “large scale construction contracts” to require the use of project labor agreements (PLA). 

On December 23, 2023, a federal District Court in California issued an order compelling the OFCCP to produce formerly-withheld EEO-1 reports to a news organization who submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the reports. This order is significant because it compels the OFCCP to produce the EEO-1 reports for all federal contractors between 2016 and 2020. The plaintiff news organization submitted four FOIA requests to the OFCCP between 2019 and 2022 requesting all EEO-1 reports submitted by all federal contractors from 2016 through 2020. OFCCP published a notice in the Federal Register informing all contractors of the requests and an opportunity to object. OFCCP released all EEO-1 reports from all non-objecting contractors. The instant litigation relates to the EEO-1 reports of the objecting contractors.

Starting January 1, 2024, eligible California employees are entitled to protected leave following a reproductive loss.  This law, California Senate Bill 848, codified at California Government Code section 12945.6, builds on California’s 2023 bereavement leave law, which provided five days of unpaid bereavement leave to eligible employees following the death of a covered family member.

On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published a final rule that restricts federal contractors in who they can employ when carrying out federal service contracts under the Service Contract Act (SCA).  The final rule implements President Biden’s Executive Order signed on November 18, 2021, and goes into effect on February 12, 2024.  The DOL estimates that this rule will affect 1.4 million workers on service contracts.

In an historic development for the financial services industry, a group of employees at a Wells Fargo branch bank in Albuquerque, New Mexico voted this week to join Wells Fargo Workers United, a grassroots labor union backed by the Communications Workers of America.  The successful vote marks the first time in memory that employees at a major U.S. bank have elected to unionize.  Workers at Wells Fargo branches in California and Florida have also filed for union elections in the past month alone. 

On December 6, 2023, the US Supreme Court heard arguments for Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, which may have significant implications for discrimination cases under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Specifically, the Supreme Court in this case could clarify whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires a clear showing of significant disadvantage or tangible harm to have an actionable claim.

As we previously reported here, the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) upended years of settled law in Tesla, Inc., 370 NLRB No. 131 (2022), when it held that employers cannot restrict employees from displaying union insignia (e.g., buttons, clothing, pins, and stickers) on their clothing at work, absent a showing of “special circumstances”—a nearly impossible standard for employers to meet.