Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

In a welcome win for defendants litigating claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), earlier this month a Northern District of Illinois magistrate judge denied a plaintiff’s motion to compel communications between defendant Union Pacific Railroad Company (“Union Pacific”) and the vendors that provided it with fingerprint-activated security gates.  Fleury v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., No. 20 C 390, 2024 WL 1620613, at *4-6 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 15, 2024).  In so doing, the court implicitly affirmed that, in a BIPA lawsuit, the common interest doctrine presumptively protects the communications between biometric technology vendors and their customers, regardless of which entities are named as defendants.  This ruling is a powerful tool in the BIPA landscape for employers (who are typically the customers in this scenario) and other defendants alike because it supports the ability of BIPA defendants to coordinate their defense strategy with entities who share their legal interest.  The opinion is also a good reminder, however, that vendors and their customers should use best practices early on in a BIPA litigation to maximize the scope of the common interest doctrine.

On February 15, 2024, California lawmakers introduced the bill AB 2930.  AB 2930 seeks to regulate use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in various industries to combat “algorithmic discrimination.”  The proposed bill defines “algorithmic discrimination” as a “condition in which an automated decision tool contributes to unjustified differential treatment or impacts disfavoring people” based on various protected characteristics including actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, sex, national origin, disability, and veteran status. 

On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued a wide-ranging Executive Order to address the development of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the U.S.  Entitled the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, the Order seeks to address both the “myriad benefits” as well as what it calls the “substantial risks” that AI poses to the country. It caps off a busy year for the Executive Branch in the AI space. In February the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published its Strategic Enforcement Plan highlighting AI ...

Federal contractors have had a flurry of headlines to keep up with over the last few months. Most prominent among them is the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council’s interim rule barring federal agencies and contractors from using TikTok or any other ByteDance product (the “Covered Applications”). 

The New Year usually means new laws for California employers.  This year, a new privacy law goes into effect with new mandates for employers to ensure that workers have more control over the collection and use of their personal information.

Come January 1, 2023, companies that employ California residents need to make sure they have taken the required steps to comply with the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), which amends the landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) by expanding its protections to employees, job applicants, and independent contractors.

On Monday, October 31, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued GC Memo 23-02, “Electronic Monitoring and Algorithmic Management of Employees Interfering with the Exercise of Section 7 Rights.”  Specifically, the Memo seeks to address the growing employer use of “a diverse set of technological tools and techniques to remotely manage workforces.”  Examples of these technologies include wearable devices, security cameras, GPS tracking devices, keyloggers, and audio recordings.

Assembly Bill 1651 or the Workplace Technology Accountability Act, a new bill proposed by California Assembly Member Ash Kalra, would regulate employers, and their vendors, regarding the use of employee data.  Under the bill, data is defined as “any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular worker, regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or obtained.”   Examples of data include personal identity information; biometric information; health, medical, lifestyle, and wellness information; any data related to workplace activities; and online information.  The bill confers certain data rights on employees, including the right to access and correct their data.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act requires employers to give employees at least 60 days’ notice when a “mass layoff” is about to occur at a “single site of employment,” which is typically a single location or a group of contiguous work locations.  Courts are beginning to confront the question of what constitutes a “single site of employment” under the WARN Act for employees working remotely, and how remote work policies impact class certification considerations.  Given the prevalence of remote work during the pandemic and the likely continuation of such work arrangements, these decisions are of particular importance to employers considering mass layoffs or facing class actions based on the application of remote work policies or practices.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way companies interact with their employees. HuntonAK’s new Labor and Employment Emerging Technology Practice is focused on helping companies navigate artificial intelligence, process automation and technological advancements that are impacting employers across all industries.

Our team of Labor and Employment attorneys are well positioned to guide employers on the effects and influence of technology in areas of human resources, hiring, employee productivity, workplace safety and collective bargaining.

With the age of artificial intelligence (AI) unfolding, products aimed at automating the recruiting and hiring process are hitting the market with increasing frequency.

Companies have been utilizing AI for tasks such as screening resumes, and even interviewing candidates and assessing whether they will be successful employees.  These automated tools range from algorithms that “weed through” resumes to personality assessments and biometric analyses that employ AI to analyze a candidate’s facial expressions, body language, voices, and inflections in video interviews.

Imagine a future in which Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) does the recruiting and hiring at U.S. companies.  Every new hire will be the uniquely perfect candidate whose skills, personality, presence, temperament, and work habits are a flawless match for the job.  Performance management and poor performance become extinct, relics from an age in which humans brought primitive instincts, biases, and flawed intuition to hiring and employment decisions.  While there are risks and challenges to employers in introducing this technology, manufacturers of AI software say that some version of that future may not be too far off.  AI software such as Mya, HireVue, and Gecko are among the numerous platforms that employers are now leveraging to hone in on and hire the best candidates more quickly. Generally speaking, AI interviewing products combine mobile video interviews with game-based assessments. The AI platform then analyzes the candidate’s facial expressions, word choice, and gestures in conjunction with game assessment results to determine the candidate’s work style, cognitive ability, and interpersonal skills.

The California Labor Code requires employers to reimburse employees for certain expenses, but it’s not always clear which expenses should be reimbursed by the employer, and which expenses should be borne by employees.  Here’s a list of Five Things to Remember About Employee Reimbursements to help California employers navigate this area of the law.

On February 12, 2018, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”) approved and released its Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2018-2022. Congress requires government agencies like the EEOC to formulate strategic plans every four years and post the plans on their website. These plans must include general goals and objectives of the agency and a description of how those goals will be achieved. In a press release introducing the plan, the EEOC indicated the plan “will serve as a framework for the Commission in achieving its mission to prevent and remedy unlawful employment discrimination and advance equal opportunity for all in the workplace.”

All employers have personnel data on their information technology systems and devices, making cyber insurance coverage one way to protect against the cost and exposure created by data breaches. In the second of this two-part interview, Hunton & Williams partners Emily Burkhardt Vicente and Walter Andrews discuss certain types of cyber insurance policies, potential gaps in coverage to watch out for, and other tips employers should keep in mind when considering cyber insurance coverage. View the 5-minute video here

The issue of whether workers are properly classified as independent contractors rather than employees is a common dispute in the gig economy, particularly in newer, technology-based industries, such as ride-sharing.

That issue just became a much simpler one in Florida: On May 9, 2017, Florida’s governor signed into law a bill that, among other things, establishes that drivers for companies such as Lyft and Uber—called “transportation network companies” or “TNCs” under the law—are independent contractors, not employees, as long as the company satisfies four conditions:

On April 22, 2014, the Sixth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of an ADA case against Ford Motor Company, finding that there was a fact issue as to whether telecommuting most days is a reasonable accommodation. In EEOC v. Ford Motor Company (No. 12-2484), the court addressed an increasingly common, yet persistently difficult, question:  when must employees be allowed to work remotely, and when is physical, in-person attendance an essential function of a job?

The growth of social media as a low-cost, widely-accessible form of communication has made it an ideal tool for businesses large and small to market themselves and reach out en mass to consumers in a manner more direct, personal, and in many ways effective than traditional media.  With Americans spending more time on-line than ever before, the value of such social media accounts can be considerable.  So when an employee who has used social media to develop his employer’s business and goodwill resigns, who owns the account, the contacts, and valuable consumer data that come with it?

The United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) has announced the launch of its first application, or “app,” for smartphones to “help employees independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they are owed” in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The application is available in both English and Spanish and allows employees to privately record regular work hours, break and meal times, and any overtime hours. The free app is currently compatible only with iPhone and iPod Touch; however, the DOL is exploring updates for compatibility with other smart phones such as Android and Blackberry phones.