Employment Law - Guide to Labor Law

The Section of Labor and Employment Law is your link to information that matters to you. Our 22,000+ members represent all perspectives of labor and employment law: employer, union, employee, public, and neutral. All are committed to a balanced discussion of employment issues in the United States and abroad. Section membership is open to all regular, associate and law student members of the ABA. Annual dues are $40 for ABA Lawyer and Associate members and free for ABA Law Student Division members.

The Agricultural Labor Affairs Coordinator (ALAC) operates within the Office of the Chief Economist and functions as the Department-wide coordinator of agricultural labor issues. The ALAC also serves as USDA's focal point for agricultural labor issues, including regulations and immigration issues, and is responsible for coordinating activities with other Federal agencies.

The child labor provisions of the Act include restrictions on hours of work and occupations for youths under age 16. These provisions also set forth 17 hazardous occupations orders for jobs that the Secretary has declared too dangerous for those under age 18 to perform.

The elaws Advisors are interactive e-tools that provide easy-to-understand information about a number of federal employment laws. Each Advisor simulates the interaction you might have with an employment law expert. It asks questions and provides answers based on responses given.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established pension and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.

The Employment Law Information Network ("ELIN") is a no charge legal resource web site that is designed for employment lawyers, in-house employment counsel and human resource professionals.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to discriminate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit.

The FLSA establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. Covered nonexempt workers are entitled to a minimum wage of not less than $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay is required after 40 hours of work in a workweek.

Covered employers must grant an eligible employee up to a total of 12 workweeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for one or more of the following reasons: * for the birth and care of the newborn child of the employee; * for placement with the employee of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care; * to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition; or * to take medical leave when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA) provides standards for the reporting and disclosure of certain financial transactions and administrative practices of labor organizations and employers; the protection of union funds and assets; the administration of trusteeships by labor organizations; and the election of officers of labor organizations. The Act also guarantees certain rights to all union members.

The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA) is administered by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD). The Act safeguards most migrant and seasonal agricultural workers in their interactions with farm labor contractors, agricultural employers, agricultural associations, and providers of migrant housing. However, some farm labor contractors, agricultural employers, agricultural associations, and providers of migrant housing are exempt from the MSPA under limited circumstances.

NELI is a non-profit educational organization headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The Institute's activities pertain exclusively to employment law compliance, the application of employment law to human resource practices, and practice and procedure before administrative bodies and in state and federal courts.

Unemployment insurance provides workers, whose jobs have been terminated through no fault of their own, monetary payments for a given period of time or until they find a new job. Unemployment payments (compensation) are intended to provide an unemployed worker time to find a new job equivalent to the one lost without financial distress. Without employment compensation many workers would be forced to take jobs for which they were overqualified or end up on welfare. Unemployment compensation is also justified in for sustaining consumer spending during periods of economic adjustment.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA, 38 U.S.C. §§ 4301 – 4335) is a federal law intended to ensure that persons who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, Reserves, National Guard or other “uniformed services:” (1) are not disadvantaged in their civilian careers because of their service; (2) are promptly reemployed in their civilian jobs upon their return from duty; and (3) are not discriminated against in employment based on past, present, or future military service.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Our mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate essential economic information to support public and private decision–making. As an independent statistical agency, BLS serves its diverse user communities by providing products and services that are objective, timely, accurate, and relevant.

The Department of Labor fosters and promotes the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions, advancing their opportunities for profitable employment, protecting their retirement and health care benefits, helping employers find workers, strengthening free collective bargaining, and tracking changes in employment, prices, and other national economic measurements. In carrying out this mission, the Department administers a variety of Federal labor laws including those that guarantee workers’ rights to safe and healthful working conditions; a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay; freedom from employment discrimination; unemployment insurance; and other income support.

The Civil Rights Center (CRC) administers and enforces various Federal statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders that relate to nondiscrimination and equal opportunity. These three types of equal opportunity laws: 1. forbid discrimination on various bases in programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance, either from DOL itself or, under Title I of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), from another Federal department; and 2. forbid discrimination on the basis of disability: 1. by specified types of public entities (such as State and local governments) and 2. in programs and activities conducted by DOL; and 3. forbid employment discrimination within DOL itself.

The DOL Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is responsible for enforcing some of our nation’s most comprehensive federal labor laws on topics, including the minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, youth employment and special employment, family and medical leave, migrant workers, lie detector tests, worker protections in certain temporary worker programs, and the prevailing wages for government service and construction contracts.

WARN helps ensure advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs. The U.S. Department of Labor has issued compliance assistance materials to help workers and employers understand their rights and responsibilities under the provisions of WARN.

FedEE exists to provide you with the cost-effective legal support you need. Getting up to speed on key aspects of employment law in a particular country no longer means taking time off to attend old-style conferences or seminars.

The HRM Guide Network offers a huge number of entirely free pages of HR-related content and links. New pages are added almost every day. Details about the latest articles on all HR-related sites are posted on HRM Guide Updates.

Because direct comparisons of national statistics across countries can be misleading due to differing concepts and methods, ILC adjusts data to a common conceptual framework. The comparisons primarily cover industrialized countries, with an increasing focus on developing economies. The ILC series are used to assess U.S. economic and labor market performance relative to that of other countries and to evaluate the competitive position of the United States in increasingly global markets.

Various arguments have been advanced over the years in support of international labour law. The argument concerning international competition was used in its most extensive form throughout the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. The argument was that international agreements in the field of labour would help prevent international competition from taking place to the disadvantage of workers, and would constitute a kind of code of fair competition between employers and between countries.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is devoted to advancing opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Its main aims are to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue in handling work-related issues.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions. The AFL-CIO was created in 1955 by the merger of the AFL and the CIO.The AFL-CIO union movement represents 11.5 million members, including 3 million members in Working America, its community affiliate. We are teachers and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and engineers, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and plumbers—and more.

For generations, America has been a leader in the global economy, thanks to the drive and innovative spirit of America's workers. But middle class families have lost ground, finding themselves squeezed between shrinking paychecks and bigger bills for basic items like housing, health care, college tuition, and energy. The mission of this committee is simple: Growing and strengthening America's middle class.

NECA is a division of the American Counseling Association and was founded in 1966 to implement solid and practical interventions to enhance employability and long-term employment.

The NELC is an organization primarily composed of minority outside and in-house attorneys throughout the United States and abroad who represent private and public sector employers in all aspects of labor and employment matters. The conference is directed to attorneys and senior level human resources professionals representing management in labor and employment law. This is an advanced program for practitioners with significant experience representing exclusively management in labor and employment law.

The National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) advances employee rights and serves lawyers who advocate for equality and justice in the American workplace. NELA is the country's largest professional organization that is exclusively comprised of lawyers who represent individual employees in cases involving employment discrimination and other employment-related matters.

The National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) was established under the Social Partnership Agreement "Towards 2016" to achieve a national culture of employment rights compliance. NERA provides information to employees and employers through its information unit, monitors employment conditions through its inspection services and can enforce compliance and seek redress.

Workplace Fairness is a non-profit organization that provides information, education, and assistance to individual workers and their advocates nationwide and promotes public policies that advance employee rights. Our goals are that workers and their advocates are educated about workplace rights and options for resolving workplace problems and that policymakers, members of the business community, and the public at large view the fair treatment of workers as both good business practice and sound public policy.

ELIN's mission is to remain the brand name resource for free employment law information on the Internet. This site is designed for lawyers concentrating in employment law and human resource professionals who specialize in employee relations.

The Institute publishes manuals, books, searchable CDs and workbooks which comprehensively address substantive, procedural and strategic issues in employment law and litigation. Updated annually, these manuals contain papers generally considered the treatises on each particular topic, written edited and published exclusively for our program.

Articles written by attorneys and experts worldwide discussing legal aspects related to Employment and Labor including: discrimination, employee benefits, employees rights, ERISA, human resources law, labor relations, outsourcing, sexual harassment, whistleblower, workers compensation and wrongful termination.