This Tuesday afternoon, the U. S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2831, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, by a vote of 225-199. Among the two Republicans voting for the bill was Rep. Don Young (R-AK). The companion bill in the Senate, S. 1843, was introduced July 20th.
Pres. Bush has recently (July 27th) threatened […]
In last Friday’s opinion, Deptula v. Simpson, 2007 WL 2143018 (Alaska July 27, 2007), the Alaska Supreme Court offered some clues about how it will resolve the waiver issues raised, but left open in Hammond v. State, DOTPF, 107 P.3d 871 (Alaska 2005), and Barnica v. Kenai Penin. Bor. Sch. Dist., 46 P.3d 974 (Alaska 2002). Justice […]
One issue raised when the Employment Law Section discussed workplace investigations of sexual harassment charges last October was whether any external, objective standards governed such investigations. In other words, are there any Daubert-like standards that might be used to critique those investigations, or even used by trial courts to admit or bar the results of those investigations? The answer […]
The new FLSA minimum wage ($5.85/hr.) is effective July 24th. You can print out a poster here.
On July 12, 2007, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) held a joint press conference in the Capitol to announce the introduction of the Arbitration Fairness Act (AFA) (S. 1782, H.R. 3010). The AFA is a comprehensive bill that would eliminate pre-dispute mandatory arbitration of claims brought by workers as well as […]
In EEOC v. Convergys Customer Management Group, Inc., the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the employer’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, after a jury awarded a disabled employee back wages and other compensatory damages of approximately $115,000. The employee was fired for being late too many times, due to the fact […]
The State successfully prosecuted Gerald Mahle for in-home possession of marijuana, but lost on appeal after the state Court of Appeals issued State v. Crocker, 97 P.3d 93 (Alaska App. 2004)(court should not issue a search warrant for home unless it has probable cause to believe that the resident’s possession of marijuana exceeds Ravin limits). […]
Scattered Alaska statutes authorize awards of actual attorneys fees to prevailing plaintiffs in employment cases. Some are familiar (such as the provision in the Wage and Hour Act for reasonable attorney fees). Some are less familiar, such as the provisions for these categories of claims:
1) Extension of fraudulent employment offers
Alaska law bars an employer from […]
In 1992, Congress enacted the Community Health Aide Program to address dental problems of Alaska Natives; as part of CHAP, Congress also created a Community Health Aide Certification Board to license dental aides. Five years later, Congress created the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) to contract with the Indian Health Service to implement CHAP. Starting in […]
“Flextime” refers to employment agreements that relax the employer’s duty to pay overtime. In Alaska, both state and federal law provide an opportunity for flextime, but the opportunity, in practice, is quite limited. The employers with the most flexibility are very small employers, on the one hand, and unionized employers with agreements permitting flextime, on […]
In U. S. v. Thomas Anderson, No. 03:06-cv-00099 JWS (D. Alaska), the government accuses Anderson of several felonies in a bribery scheme involving Cornell Corrections. The prosecution sought to introduce third party comments that VECO (not a party to the alleged scheme) paid Anderson $2,500/month for doing nothing. Judge Sedwick’s order excluding such comments, on the basis that […]
The U. S. Supreme Court’s opinion last Thursday in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, 2007 WL 1836531 (June 28, 2007), may substantially limit employer diversity programs. According to an analysis by Eric Dreiband in SCOTUSblog,
After Thursday’s decision, it seems clear that in the absence of a “manifest imbalance,” an employer will […]
