Former employee alleged union retaliated against him for not participating in the falsification of time records showing service to trust funds for submission to the U.S. Dept. of Labor and reporting his concerns to FBI. District Court held Employee Retirement Income Security Act did not completely preempt or preempt former employee's whistleblower and wrongful discharge...
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Hawaii Employment Law Decisions from September 27, 2015 to October 3, 2015 – Jeffrey S. Harris
Federal Arbitration Act did not preempt California law barring enforcement of an arbitration agreement against an employee's clams under the California Private Attorney General Act. Sakkub v, Luxotttica Retail N. Am., Inc., 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 17071 (9th Cir. Sept. 28, 2015). District Court denied motion to dismiss former employees' claims that company (a) violated...
Read MoreSept. 30, 2015: John Knorek to Present at 2nd Small Biz Academy
On Wednesday, September 30, 2015, John Knorek of Torkildson, Katz will speak at the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii's 2nd Small Biz Academy workshop. The Workshop is a half-day series of seminars designed to help those who want to start a business and to help small to medium-sized business owners run their operations more efficiently and...
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from September 20, 2015 to September 26, 2015 – Jeffrey S. Harris
City of Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour in stages according to two schedules-one for businesses with 500 or more employees that reached $15 by January 1, 2017 and the second for businesses with fewer than 500 employees that did not reach $14 until January 1, 2021. The City classified franchisees associated...
Read MoreSept. 17, 2015: John Knorek Speaks at CAI Employment Law Seminar
On Thursday, September 17, 2015, John Knorek of Torkildson, Katz spoke alongside Al Pattison of Hawaiiana Management at the Community Associations Institute-Hawaii Chapter's Employment Law Seminar, "Firing Line: Do's and Don'ts of Employment Law".
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from September 13, 2015 to September 19, 2015 - Jeffrey S. Harris
The National Labor Relations Act preempted the Idaho Fairness in Contracting Act, which banned "job targeting" or "market recovery" programs under which construction unions collect funds from workers they represent and use those funds to subsidize bids by union contractors, even though those funds are derived in part from wages paid the workers under the...
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from September 6, 2015 to September 12, 2015 - Jeffrey S. Harris
A successor employer can be subject to withdrawal liability under the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act, so long as it takes over the business with notice of the liability. The most important factor in assessing whether an employer is a successor for purposes of withdrawal liability is whether there was substantial continuity in the business...
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from August 30, 2015 to September 5, 2015 - Jeffrey S. Harris
District Court properly granted union's petition to compel arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement. It was for the arbitrator to decide whether the parties' collective bargaining agreement had expired when the union sought to invoke the agreement's grievance and arbitration procedure against the employer, or whether, according to an "evergreen clause," the agreement continued in...
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from August 23, 2015 to August 29, 2015 - Jeffrey S. Harris
Persons who held legal title to the assets of an employee benefit plan with the intent to deal with these assets solely for the benefit of the members of the plan were "trustees" and their relationship with the members of the plan was a "trust" covered by ERISA, even though the documents that formed that...
Read MoreHawaii Employment Law Decisions from August 16, 2015 to August 22, 2015- Jeffrey S. Harris
An employee did not allege facts sufficient to show that her eczema substantially limited her in a major life activity and caused her to have a protected disability, the Court of Appeals explained in affirming the district court's dismissal of her disability discrimination complaint for failure to state a claim. Fee v. Mgmt. & Training...
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