Green Savits Employment Law Blog

            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.  ...

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled late last June, 2015 State v. Saavedra that an employee who takes an employer's confidential documents may be criminally prosecuted and go to jail if found guilty. In that case, a school board employee was alleged to have taken confidential student files along with other documents that contained personal information about other individuals  Many of the documents allegedly taken were originals or the only copies contained in the school board files.  As we've indicated elsewhere in an interview with the New Jersey Law Journal, this ruling will create a chilling effect on employees who rightly believe that...

If you ever want to see an employer's attorney head explode, all you have to do is observe that attorney's reaction when he/she learns that an ex-employee plaintiff has taped conversations in the workplace.  This is especially true when the employer's decision-makers have testified in depositions to a completely false explanation of why the employee was fired/demoted etc. and the tape recording completely contradicts that testimony.  I have been involved in trying two cases where my fired employee client alleged an illegal discriminatory firing and tape recorded conversations in the workplace prior to the firing.  Both cases captured...