In some ways, you don’t want to be the guy who says, “I’ve been doing this a long time.” Often it comes across as a bit condescending, as though the fact that the speaker has been doing it longer makes what he (and really, it usually is a he) is saying right. But now that I have been doing this (representing employers, that is) a long time, it does give you some useful historical perspective, which sometimes can help us make sense of present developments.
No matter how long somebody has been representing employers, not surprisingly COVID has shown us things we have not seen before. More remote work than ever, squared then cubed, but that’s not law. And people disagree more than ever about employment laws (and everything else). That’s not law either; those are arguments.
Here are four things about employment laws employers are wrestling with in ways previously unseen:
1. Employers are thinking more than ever about things that haven’t happened yet, because they have to. In the spring of 2020, we waited as Congress and the administration debated what ultimately passed as the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA) which, among other things, required many employers to provide paid leave. Employers were going to have to move fast, and it was a moving target as the bill went back and forth between the Senate and the House.
Now (as of this writing) we wait to see what the courts will do with OSHA’s vaccination mandate, due to take effect December 5 and requiring employers...
Every couple of years, the same false stories come back. A claim that an election was rigged before a single vote was cast. An old video of violence, stripped of its date and place, presented as b...