We are in Chicago attending the ABA 4th Annual Section of Labor and Employment Law Conference.  We are a little more than halfway through the conference and we have gathered all sorts of great material for this blog, and for our next HR Law & Solutions seminar (scheduled for Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at Pelican Preserve Country Club in Fort Myers).

In the meantime, we thought we’d do a quick “preview-of-things-to-come” based on issues that have been addressed at the Conference:

  • Top 5 ADAAA Compliance Tips for Employers (if you recall my previous post on EEOC enforcement of the ADAAA you know you want to pay close attention!).
  • Emerging issues top employment litigators expect to explode:  social media and resulting discrimination claims; privacy in the workplace; and, misclassification of employees as independent contractors.
  • GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.  The EEOC is *this close* to issuing its final regulations, which should be out no later than next week.  If you don’t know what GINA is you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this blog over the next few weeks.
  • The next wave in FLSA litigation?  Issues over whether work communications on mobile devices count as compensable time.
  • Also, check out the Department of Labor’s FLSA Fact Sheet #13.  It’s not new but a very useful tool for determining whether an employer-employee relationship exists.
  • Watch out for a growing number of national origin discrimination cases based on English language/fluency requirements and/or accent discrimination.
  • #1 thing employers should do upon learning of an employee’s discrimination/harassment complaint?  You MUST complete a thorough, fast, and unbiased investigation.

These are some of the top hot-button items discussed at the Conference.  If you see anything that piques your interest or that you would like to see as a topic at HR Law & Solutions in April, please let us know.  We will follow up with more detail on many of these topics here in the coming weeks.