Annals of European employment law: “The Irish arm of supermarket giant Tesco has been ordered to pay a convicted drug dealer €11,500 for unfair dismissal.” The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) found that the market should have considered sanctions less severe than dismissal given that the employee had cooperated with its process and that a manager admitted there was no evidence of public awareness of the employee’s legal troubles, which eventuated in a guilty plea and a suspended jail sentence. [Evening Herald (Ireland)]
Posts Tagged ‘employment at will’
“Costa Concordia captain sues for wrongful termination”
“Francesco Schettino, former captain of the Costa Concordia, has sued, claiming wrongful termination from his job after the accident, according to his lawyer.” [L.A. Times] “As you may recall, there were a few questions about whether Schettino’s conduct was entirely up to snuff on the night of the accident. First, there was the whole running-into-a-rock problem, of course, but he was also criticized for then fleeing the ship before all the passengers were evacuated.” [Lowering the Bar]
Labor and employment law roundup
- Gov. Walker’s public sector labor reforms popular with Wisconsin voters, and have saved taxpayers a fortune [Morrissey, Fund, Marquette poll (public favors new law by 50-43 margin] What would FDR say? [Dalmia, The Daily]
- “Why you should stop attending diversity training” [Suzanne Lucas, CBS MarketWatch, following up on our earlier post]
- The gang that couldn’t regulate straight: “Court rebuffs Labor Department on sales rep overtime” [Dan Fisher, Forbes] Lack of quorum trips up NLRB on “quickie”/ambush elections scheme [Workplace Prof]
- Not all claimed “gun rights” are authentic, some come at expense of the vital principle of at-will employment [Bainbridge]
- Brace yourself, legal academics at work on a Restatement of Employment Law [Michael Fox]
- “Why Delaware’s Proposed Workplace Privacy Act Is All Wrong” [Molly DiBianca]
- USA Today on lawyers’ role in growth of Social Security disability rolls [Ira Stoll]
Labor and employment law roundup
- Court rebukes EEOC in big sex harassment class action against trucking firm [Memphis Commercial Appeal]
- Union protects some dodgy educators: “Found to Have Misbehaved With Pupils, but Still Teaching” [New York Times]
- Spain changes its labor law [Global Post]
- Employment-law blogs debate employment at will [Jon Hyman]
- James Sherk of Heritage on proposed Employee Rights Act;
- Unlawful under Contracts Clause to alter public employee pensions? Really? [Secunda, Workplace Prof; Barnes v. Arizona State Ret. Sys., Ariz. Super. Ct., No. CV-2011-011638, 2/1/12]
- Coalition challenges Connecticut governor’s executive order aimed at unionizing home health aides [Michael Tremoglie, Legal NewsLine]
Great moments in law firm management?
According to the Sun-Sentinel, managers at the Deerfield Beach, Fla. real estate law firm of Elizabeth Wellborn fired 14 employees on Friday for wearing orange clothing. According to the report, an executive had been informed that the workers were wearing orange as a protest, but several employees told the newspaper that they knew of no protest and that they customarily wore orange on paydays so that they would appear as a group at a happy hour after work.
If the story checks out as reported — the law firm was recorded as having declined comment — expect to hear rumblings about how it refutes the American legal principle of “employment at will,” though it doesn’t actually refute that principle any more than the tale of a wastrel heir refutes the principle of inheritance.
Spain adapts around employment tenure laws
Spanish law makes it difficult and expensive to dismiss conventionally employed workers, but the market has managed to route around that to some extent [J. Servulo Gonzalez, El Pais via Tyler Cowen]:
Temporary contracts were introduced in a labor reform approved in 1984 by the Socialist government of Felipe González, and they have remained in favor ever since – even more so during times of crisis, such as those currently being seen in Spain, where 93 out of every 100 contracts signed of late have been temporary.
Although the Spanish government has attempted to re-regulate temporary employment, as by forbidding renewal of temporary contracts — a step that obviously works to the disadvantage of some of the workers affected — it has also been forced to trim back some of the elaborate tenure protections for private-sector workers, who may now walk away with a maximum of two years’ salary as severance, down from three and a half years’.
Some heroes for our time
My new post at Cato at Liberty is on Italian labor law professors Pietro Ichino and Carlo Dell’Aringa, who live under police protection because of their support for liberalization of the job market; two other professors, Massimo D’Antona and Mario Biagi, have been killed by Red Brigades gunmen. More: Coyote.
Europe’s unwelcoming tech hatchery
Why does Europe generate so few star high-tech firms? Bad labor law is one reason [Brian Palmer, Slate]
Brits to make it easier to hire/fire workers
Hey, that might work here too! It’s the subject of my new Cato Institute post, which also mentions today’s news of a big jump (to record levels) in federal employment discrimination cases, fueled by the 2008 ADA Amendments Act.
Marijuana legalization and employment law
I’ve got some thoughts at Cato at Liberty on the overreaching way California’s Proposition 19 tried to curtail employers’ liberty in employment decisions related to pot smoking — which might have contributed to the measure’s defeat at the polls on Tuesday. Earlier here. Jacob Sullum points out that much of employers’ tendency to treat off-job marijuana use more harshly than off-job alcohol use is itself stimulated by government mandates and exhortation, prominently including drug testing programs (& welcome Instapundit readers). More: Nancy Berner, California Labor & Employment Law Blog (“Merely smelling marijuana on a worker’s clothes after lunch would not be sufficient to justify a write-up” had the measure passed.)