Congress enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) to prevent employment discrimination on the basis of age against persons 40 years of age or older. The ADEA applies to most American employers with 20 or more employees. To aid in enforcement efforts of the ADEA, implementing regulations require covered employers to retain a number of employment records for specified periods of time.
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) provides that employees have a right to engage in certain "concerted activities," which include strikes, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. The NLRA also specifies that it should not be interpreted to impede or diminish employees' rights to strike. The NLRA does, however, place limits upon this right. Under the NLRA some strikes are legal and some are not.
Most American employers are subject to a number of federal workplace laws and regulations. To ensure that employees are made aware of the protections afforded to them by these laws, employers must hang various posters describing them. This article summarizes the federal workplace poster requirements applicable to most employers, including small businesses.
When a person creates or invents something during the course of employment by another person or business, he may or may not own his creation. Typically, ownership is determined by a number of factors, including whether or not the individual was hired for the purpose of inventing and whether or not he used company time and resources to do so. Beyond these general guidelines, however, there are a number of unique employment arrangements that may play a role in determining ownership.
Employees may not have privacy rights in email sent on company-owned equipment even if the company makes assurances that all email communications are confidential and privileged. A wrongful discharge case against a Pennsylvania company that made such assurances was recently dismissed after an employee made inappropriate and unprofessional comments to his supervisor. The court found that an employee could have no expectation of privacy in communications made on a company email system to his supervisor.
