On March 26, 2012 I posted a blog cautioning employers from requesting social media password, most notably, Facebook. That practice may be short-lived as legislation has been introduced in both Houses of the United States Congress making unlawful for employers or schools to require employees, students and/or candidates to provide social media password. Although several states introduced legislation in March and April of 2012, the proposed legislation may impact employers and its employees throughout the country. Bill H.R. 5050 was introduced by House Representative Eliot Engel on April 27, 2012 and is titled Social Networking Online Protection Act (SNOPA). The [ Read More ]
Archive for the ‘Employment Contracts’ Category
by Unfair Competition & Trade Secrets Counsel on March 30, 2012 By Jedd Mendelson and I. Michael Kessel A New Jersey district court recently held that an employee handbook provision could not be enforced as a valid confidentiality agreement between a company and a former employee. Metropolitan Foods, Inc. d/b/a Driscoll Foods v. Kelsch [pdf] involved a former employee of Driscoll Foods (Kelsch), who was accused of soliciting orders for his new employer while still working for Driscoll. Driscoll sued Kelsch under a number of causes of action, including breach of contract. This claim was based upon a provision in [ Read More ]
Why Congress and the States Should Prohibit This Practice Have you ever gone to a job interview and had a prospective employer ask to see letters you’ve written to friends or family members, or your family photo albums? Have prospective employers asked for the key to your apartment so that they can snoop around? The answer to these questions should, of course, be “No.” Yet, as the Associated Press reported last week, employers—both public and private—are increasingly asking job applicants to do the equivalent, by turning over their Facebook user IDs and passwords as part of the interview process. This [ Read More ]
J.P. Morgan Chase will not have to pay a currency trader £580,000, or $921,000, after the company mistakenly missed a decimal point when printing his contract, a British court ruled. The Swiss-based trader, Kai Herbert, was expecting to earn an annual salary of 24 million rand, or $3.1 million, when he left UBS to join J.P. Morgan in South Africa. However J.P. Morgan said that it had erred and the contract should have been printed at 2.4 million rand. By the time Herbert got the bad news, he had already left UBS. According to Bloomberg, Judge Henry Globe said in [ Read More ]
This is stunning. regardless of one’s position on this issue, it is amazing to see how much the political winds have shifted on education issues. the fact that a bill like this is introduced in New Jersey by an influential democrat reveals the fundamental adjustments in our political landscape…and evolution of public opinion. five years ago such reform would have been unthinkable. whether you agree with this legislation or not, one thing is clear: this is a big deal. a big deal for teachers, taxpayers and students. let’s see how it plays out. By APP.com TRENTON — The head of [ Read More ]
By: Nolo Law For All If you are employed at will, your employer does not need good cause to fire you. Job applicants and new employees are often perplexed to read–in a job application, employment contract, or employee handbook–that they will be employed “at will.” They are even more troubled when they find out exactly what this language means: An at-will employee can be fired at any time, for any reason (except for a few illegal reasons, spelled out below). If the employer decides to let you go, that’s the end of your job–and you have very limited legal rights [ Read More ]
Employment Contracts A contract of employment is a category of contract used in labor law to attribute right and responsibilities between parties to a bargain. On the one end stands an “employee” who is “employed” by an “employer”. It has arisen out of the old master-servant law, used before the 20th century. Put generally, the contract of employment denotes a relationship of economic dependence and social subordination. In the words of the influential labor lawyer Sir Otto Kahn-Freund, “the relation between an employer and an isolated employee or worker is typically a relation between a bearer of power and one [ Read More ]
