Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On April 8, 2014, in recognition of National Equal Pay Day, President Obama continued to advance his wage equality agenda by focusing on wage transparency through Executive Order on Non-Retaliation for Disclosure of Compensation Information (“Executive Order”) and a Presidential Memorandum entitled "Advancing Pay Equality Through Compensation Data Collection" (“Presidential Memorandum”).

On February 25, 2014, National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “the Board”) General Counsel Richard F. Griffin issued Memorandum GC 14-01 to outline the agency’s enforcement priorities for the coming year.  The memorandum, which requires regional offices to submit matters of special interest to the Board’s Division of Advice for guidance on how to proceed, groups those priorities into three categories: (1) matters that involve General Counsel initiatives or areas of law and labor policy that are of particular concern to his office; (2) matters that involve difficult legal issues or areas of law in which governing precedent is unclear; and (3) an updated and expanded list of case-handling matters that have traditionally been submitted to the Division of Advice.

On March 6, 2014, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) released guidance pertaining to employers’ responsibilities to accommodate religious dress and grooming in the workplace.  

The guidance provides explanation and analysis concerning an employer’s responsibilities under Title VII to “make exceptions to their usual rules or preferences to permit applicants and employees to follow religiously-mandated dress and grooming practices unless it would pose an undue hardship to the operation of an employer’s business.”

Earlier this month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its fiscal year 2013 enforcement and litigation statistical report.  Each year, the EEOC publishes a comprehensive set of data tables which contain statistics on topics such as numbers of charges filed, types of charges filed, litigation and resolution numbers, and a myriad of other tables that provide insight into the agency’s actions over the 12-month period.