Hyperactive Year for Employment Law Predicted
Employers already are seeing a lot of activity by OSHA but also should watch the NLRB, EEOC, and U.S. Supreme Court this year, writes Rich Meneghello, managing partner of the Portland, Ore. office of Fisher & Phillips LLP.
Richard R. Meneghello, managing partner of the Portland, Ore. office of Fisher & Phillips LLP (the Atlanta-based employment law firm that former OSHA Administrator Ed Foulke Jr. joined after leaving the safety agency in November 2008) has summarized 2009's important events in employment law in an A-to-Z Labor Letter. Founded in 1943, the firm represents management in labor, employment, civil rights, employee benefits, and immigration cases.
Meneghello predicts continued activism by OSHA and an activist National Labor Relations Board this year, a busy U.S. Supreme Court term for employment law issues, continued wage and hour enforcement by the U.S. Labor Department, and new age discrimination guidance coming in February from EEOC.
His entry for "G" concerns one current EEOC topic highly important to employers: "Employers will need to familiarize themselves with yet another acronym this year: GINA, or the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which went into effect in November and prohibits employers from acquiring or using genetic information about its employees. And employers need to add yet another poster to the crowded bulletin board in the break room, this time about employees' genetic privacy rights."
The firm lists Foulke as a partner in the Atlanta office and co-chair of the firm's Workplace Safety and Catastrophe Management Practice Group.