Labor Day is an important holiday for honoring and celebrating the achievements and contributions of workers in America. As a child, I was not a fan of Labor Day. After all, it meant the end of summer vacation. As an adult, however, I look forward to it: it signals the beginning of fall with its crisp cool nights, the coming Buffalo Bills season (this is the year!), and of course—the end of my children’s summer vacation.
As a labor lawyer, Labor Day is also significant for me as I think about it through the framework of my Industrial Labor Relations undergraduate education and everyday work helping employers comply with employment laws and foster the best possible productive, happy, and healthy workplaces. Among my labor lawyer colleagues, we sometimes also take the holiday as an opportunity to give each other gifts. And this Labor Day, my good friend and partner Ben Mudrick has gifted this column — which he has authored for the last few years — to me. Thank you, Ben! Or, thank you, Ben? In any event, I welcome the opportunity and will try to live up to the high standard Ben set for this column.
Labor lawyers aren’t the only people giving Labor Day gifts this year. On September 9, Governor Hochul signed an access to personnel file records law — a gift to employees in New York. Many other states already have personnel file review laws in place, and this is one area where New York, normally at the vanguard of employee-friendly legislation, has trailed other states, including...
Millions of Aussies will be cheering Ben Roberts-Smith after seeing his publicity campaign. But we must leave all these matters to a criminal court to decide – this time beyond reasonable doubt. A...