Employment Law Updates
Immigration
On Wednesday, October 5, Judge Blackburn denied requests made by the Department of Justice and a coalition of civil rights groups to delay implementation of HB 56 while on appeal. Last week, Judge Blackburn upheld the vast majority of HB 56, while enjoining several provisions of the law. The groups will be appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and have stated that they may seek a stay from the 11th Circuit to prevent the law from staying in effect pending the appeal. I will post updates as they occur.
In the meantime, there are numerous reports of students leaving schools throughout the state, workers leaving their jobs and several arrests have been made pursuant to HB 56. Interestingly, the first arrests reported arose from a drug bust, and those arrested were from Yemen, and were not Hispanic.
NLRB
I have previously reported that the NLRB was going to require the posting of Notification of Employee Rights effective November 14, 2011. Because there appears to be much confusion over what businesses were covered by this requirement, the NLRB has delayed implementation of the posting until January 31, 2012. At least 3 lawsuits have been filed seeking to prevent the NLRB from requiring this posting.
Social Media and the NLRB
The NLRB has been active in reviewing terminations or other disciplinary action as the result of social media posting. I reported in February that the NLRB had contested the termination of an employee at an ambulance company. Another social media firing case involved a BMW dealership in Chicago, where an employee posted negative comments about one of the dealership's events, when they planned to bring a hot dog cart to provide food to customers. The salesman complained that the dealership should provide better food for it's customers. This same salesman also took pictures of an accident that occurred when a customer was test driving a BMW and hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal, and crashed. These photos were posted at the same time he posted pictures of the hot dog cart. The dealership learned of the postings the next day, and terminated the salesman. The NLRB claimed that the posts were protected concerted activity since part of the salesman's compensation was customer satisfaction, and the postings about the hot dog cart concerned his compensation. The NLRB administrative judge ruled that the posting about the hot dog cart was protected, but found that the posting about the accident was not, and that the dealership terminated is employment based on the accident related posting.
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