President Barack Obama recently updated regulations determining which employees are eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standard Act’s minimum wage and overtime pay protections. The Department of Labor’s new and improved overtime rule, which was issued in May 2016, will be implemented in December of 2016. However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says the new rule is […]

Illinois will officially implement the Employee Sick Leave Act on January 1, 2017. The new act requires employers to grant sick pay for employees whose immediate family members find themselves ill. This new policy can also be thought of as the “kin care” law. The intention of the law is to complement the one recently passed in Chicago, which provides the […]

A new resolution that seeks to include worker protections was approved by the City Council of Austin on Thursday, September 1. The Council added the resolution to a new program intended to expedite the permit process for construction projects. The worker protections include mandating that construction workers be paid a living wage of $13.03 per hour, receive proper […]

Kelley Rieves, a former assistant manager for Buc-ee’s, was sued by her employer in the 165th State District Civil Court for breach of contract. Buc-ee’s claims that Rieves allegedly left the company in July 2012 even though her contract clearly stated that she should remain employed with Buc-ee’s until at least August 2013. According to the lawsuit, […]

Austin Watershed Protection Department Managing Engineer Mapi Vigil, who worked for the City of Austin for close to 30 years, sued the city for gender discrimination. The lawsuit came after Vigil applied for an assistant director position but was passed over for a male candidate, despite her high performance reviews and years of loyalty. Vigil filed an internal grievance […]

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit on Thursday, July 21 in the United States District Court in Urbana. They are fighting on behalf of a former employee against a branch of the furniture company Rent-A-Center. Both the employee and EEOC allege that the 1404 E. Grove Avenue location in Rantoul, Illinois […]

Wills Point resident Cathy McCoy filed a lawsuit on Thursday, July 14 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas against the City of Van, claiming sexual harassment and wrongful termination. According to the legal complaint that McCoy filed, the city subjected her to a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, discrimination, and eventually unlawful […]

A new report from the United States Department of Labor issued last Tuesday, June 21 showed that for working-age persons with disabilities, rates of employment and labor-force participation are rising. The numbers for both metrics increased between 2014 and 2015 after steady dips following the economic recession. For instance, disabled men who are between the ages of […]

As of Monday, June 6, Texas has 12 cities with populations of more than 100,000 that have instituted legislation that establishes protection for residents or city employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The newest addition to this list is the city of Mesquite. For more than ten years, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin have held ordinances that […]

Former Austin Police Department Officer Blayne Williams, who was fired from the force in 2015, is appealing his termination, claiming that he was fired for filing a discrimination complaint against the department. In his lawsuit filed on Thursday, April 28, Williams says that his termination from the police force is unjust because he was not informed of complaints filed […]