Green Savits Employment Law Blog

An interesting NY Times article in the Business Section on December 18, 2016 reported that a study of Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and Dodd Frank whistle-blowers found that exposing coporate wrong-doing actually changed corporate conduct for the better.

In fact, the burden of proof for whistle-blowers who claim retaliation under SOX are very pro-whistleblower. All a whistle-blower has to prove under SOX is that he/she is an employee who reasaonbly believed that the employer was violating federal securities laws and that the employer retaliated against the whistleblower for either objecting to or reporting the wrongdoing to a supervisor,...

Both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ have actually made it easier for employees of publicly traded companies listed on their exchanges to successfully bring whistleblower retaliation claims. The exchanges did so by passing rules requiring listed companies to develop procedures for whistle-blowing employees to report illegal corporate wrongdoing. Of course, both the NYSE and NASDAQ did not do this out of the goodness of their hearts but were directed to take action by the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Section 406 of the 2002 Sarbanes Oxley Act. See 17 CFR 228.406(b)(3) and 229.406 (b)(3). That provision...

            Most people are aware of today’s fight over the minimum wage.  Although the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour for many years now, Congress will not allow an increase.  Because of this, President Obama took executive action to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 per hour.  States have taken it upon themselves to raise the minimum wage.  New Jersey voted in 2014 to raise its minimum wage to $8.25 per hour and indexed it to inflation which is why it now stands at $8.38.  I think that most people would agree that $7.25 or $8.38 or even $10.10 per hour is hardly a living wage for full-time...

Just a year and a half ago, the New Jersey legislature passed the New Jersey Pregnant Worker’s Fairness Act (“PWFA”), which prohibits pregnancy discrimination and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees. However, the PWFA does not affect an employee’s entitlement to paid or unpaid leave. This begs the question, what maternity/paternity leave is an employee entitled to? While many companies in the United States are beginning to establish paid parental leave policies, unlike many other countries, the U.S. does not require that employers provide job protected, let alone paid, leave for new parents.  ...