This year, Governor Cuomo signed a law making changes to the Taylor Law to strengthen public unions.  The Taylor Law, officially the Public Employees Fair Employment Act, defines the rights and limitations for public employees in New York.  The major changes to the existing law include the following:


The US Supreme Court recently upheld mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts that waived an employee’s right to bring class or collective actions.


For approximately 40 years, public sector employee unions could collect union “agency fees” from the paychecks of even those employees who chose not to join the union.  The premise was that even non-members benefitted from the contracts the unions negotiated with public entities, so should have to pay at least something for that benefit.  Many of the non-member employees objected because the unions at times took positions on political or other issues with which they disagreed, but were forced to pay to support. 


For many children who graduate from high school, the next step in their journey to adulthood is college.  For many children, this is the first time they will be living away from home and/or making significant life decisions on their own, without their parents’ assistance or supervision.  This can be a difficult transition for a child, but even more so for a parent who, for the last 17 years, has been making all of his/her child’s major decisions.


The NYS Legislature has passed a bill which would add bereavement leave to the list of permissible reasons to take paid family leave.  The bill would allow employees to use paid family leave after the death of a family member.  It would also allow those who have already been using paid family leave to care for a family member to use any remaining time for bereavement.


Earlier this month, the NLRB issued a guidance on employee handbook rules, which follows its landmark decision in The Boeing Company last December.  The Boeing case established a new standard when evaluating whether a work rule violates the law, and focused on the negative impact on the employees’ ability to exercise their rights and the policy’s connection to the employer’s right to maintain discipline and productivity in the workplace. 


In a narrow recent Decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission illegally found against a baker who claimed his religious beliefs prevented him from creating a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.   The key was that the Commission allowed other bakers to refuse to create cakes that demeaned gays and same-sex marriages.


When an employee informs an employer he/she has a disability that requires accommodation, employers must remember that engaging in an interactive process with that employee is imperative.  It is not enough for an employer to simply provide what it believes is a reasonable accommodation.  The interactive process must be used to facilitate a conversation between employer and employee to determine the different reasonable accommodation possibilities.  They can then decide together what the best option will be for that employee, as long as that option is not an undue burden on the employer. 


When it comes to your estate plan, it is important to periodically review your beneficiary designation forms in order to ensure that they are correct. This is a vital part of the planning process for all individuals, and it is often overlooked, many times causing the person that an individual wanted to receive certain assets to receive nothing.


Getting divorced is a complicated and drawn-out process, where emotions run high and the last thing on an individual’s mind is updating his/her estate planning documents.  While that is indeed the case for many individuals going through a divorce, once a divorce is finalized, it is imperative that individuals review their estate planning documents and amend or update them so that they will reflect the individual’s new planning goals.  This review does not stop at a Will or Trust; rather, it will be necessary for individuals to review all of their financial accounts - their bank account inf