Langdon Ramsburg

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After the pandemic began to ease, and labor availability was the lowest in recent history, many employees found themselves working more and more to fill the gaps in the workforce.  That led to the trend popularized a year ago called “quiet quitting.”  Under its tamest definition, quiet quitting was/is a practice where employees only did…

Despite our best attempts to suppress the memory, we all remember it well.  Just over two years ago, the pandemic triggered state-ordered shutdowns.  Our economy obviously slowed to a crawl, and employers everywhere immediately found themselves with surplus workers.  The result was mass layoffs, flooding the labor market with available employees.  To get employees back…

Historically, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) has not required federal contractors to submit proof that their written affirmative action plans were completed.  The only time that a contractor had to produce evidence of its plan was during an OFCCP audit.  As many federal contractors now know, that is about to change.

In…

After the country waited with anticipation for the better part of a year for a vaccine that would return us to some sense of normalcy, the FDA finally approved two vaccines in December.  The plan was to vaccinate frontline healthcare workers first – for obvious and understandable reasons.  It was also the plan that 20…

Yesterday, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) became effective, granting eligible employees emergency paid sick leave and emergency paid family leave in response to COVID-19.  On the same day, after weeks of employers (and their attorneys) attempting to decipher the nuances of the leave requirements, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued temporary regulations, shedding…

Yesterday, President Trump signed into law historic legislation that will have a significant impact on a many employers nation-wide.  The legislation, called the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, has many provisions.  We will focus this discussion on the workplace issues that most employers can expect to face.

Paid Sick Leave

The law includes the Emergency…

Yesterday, we reported on a Commonwealth Court decision that basically concluded that an arbitrator’s award ordering the reinstatement of a discharged employee who is incapable of performing his job violates the “essence test.” We also noted that a subsequent decision of the court seems to be a bit in conflict with that holding. Let’s take…

In November 2017, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania issued an opinion concerning an arbitrator’s reinstatement of a state correctional officer (“CO”). The CO was responsible for monitoring inmates who worked on the prison’s loading dock. As far back as 2015, the CO’s supervisors noticed unauthorized food items in the dock area. Despite instruction to remove…