Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

For years, there has been nearly universal agreement among the courts that managers do not engage in “protected activity” for retaliation claim purposes under most employment laws when they raise concerns about compliance issues in the regular course of performing their job duties. The traditional reasoning held that a manager whose job includes evaluating and/or reporting compliance issues, and who does so in furtherance of his or her job duties, should not become cloaked in anti-retaliation protection for merely doing the job he or she is employed to do. Instead, to engage in protected activity, the manager must step outside his or her role as a manager and become adversarial to the employer. The so-called “manager rule” has been consistently used by courts to reject retaliation claims under various employment statutes by human resources professionals and supervisors who report employment-related compliance issues related to other employees.

On November 24, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit refused to enforce an arbitration clause in an employee handbook on the grounds that the employee never agreed to be contractually bound by the handbook, and that a court can only compel arbitration where it is satisfied that the parties have agreed to arbitrate. This case, Lorenzo v. Prime Communications, L.P., should serve as a warning to employers to review their employee handbooks to be sure that provisions, like an arbitration clause, will be enforceable.

Please join us via webinar for a dynamic roundtable discussion with our distinguished panel of experts who will share their thoughts on changes in the law, what steps a company should take to comply with the new law and issues employers should consider as they evaluate their employee compensation.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PT
(2:00 p.m. ET – 3:00 p.m. ET)

On December 7, 2015, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania permitted a plaintiff to pursue discrimination claims alleging that she had been forced to retire as a result of her age and disability status—despite the fact that she had voluntarily agreed to retire as part of a union grievance settlement. This case, Melan v. Belle Vernon Area School District, serves as a warning to employers settling grievances under a collective bargaining agreement that implicate employees’ federally protected rights.