| Employment & Labor Law |
| Discrimination |
| Rights: Americans Disabilities Act |
| Employment Contracts |
| Family & Medical Leave |
| Human Resources |
| OSHA |
| Sexual Harassment |
| Wage and Hour Law |
| Wrongful Termination |
Employment and Labor Law
Many of the employment and labor laws have taken place during the last seven decades. National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the primary labor law or law of union-management relations, was enacted and amended between the years 1935 and 1965. NLRA was established to give workers with collective rights, and focused on their rights to have a union organization and to engage in collective bargaining so employees and employers can reach an agreement to improve employment terms and conditions.
In the early 1960s, however, it became apparent that NLRA was not sufficient to address issues in the workplace. Some employees prefer not to join union representation, while others are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the manifestation of this observation. Title VII provided rights to workers against certain discriminatory employment practices such as on the basis of race, gender, religion or national origin.
The NLRA granted rights to employees only as far as their actions were in concert with fellow employees and had limited coverage. In contrast, Title VII provided legal rights to the individual employee, and expanded coverage to all employees irrespective of their occupational status. It was Title VII which marked the beginning of workplace law development that would grant workers their individual employment rights.
Before enactment of Title VII, only a handful of laws covered the rights of individual employees. One of these statutes is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which standardized minimum wages and overtime rates to covered employees. After Title VII was passed, several prohibited acts of employment discrimination were also defined through subsequent legislations. Some of them are discrimination based on age and disability, and the actions that could be deemed discriminatory covered a much broader range. Occupational Safety Health Act (OSHA) was passed in 1972 to provide individual employees with safe working conditions.
This increasingly complex set of legislations involving the workplace has given rise to the specialization called employment law. You will need an attorney of this specialization when you wish to obtain legal assistance on issues involving employment discrimination, employment compensation, pensions, workplace safety, worker’s compensation, and many others.