Maine Employment Lawyer Blog

The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution entitles you to a jury trial if your employer violates your common law rights. For example, if you and your employer had a contract which set forth how much your employer would pay you and it violated the contract, the Seventh Amendment would entitle you to a jury trial.

The Seventh Amendment helps to level the playing field between extremely powerful corporations and ordinary people. For that reason, some extremely powerful corporations require job applicants to waive their Seventh Amendment rights before they will hire them. They sneak "arbitration clauses" into the fine print of employment applications or employee handbooks. These arbitration clauses require you to give up your right to a jury trial and, instead, pursue your claims in a private judicial system that has many features which benefit companies and disadvantage employees--that is why companies require employees to agree to them.

Even if you notice the arbitration clause in your employment application and object to it, the employer will almost never hire you unless you agree to it. As more and more companies use these arbitration clauses, it will become harder and harder for people to find jobs with employers that do not require them to relinquish their constitutional rights.

Sometimes courts will refuse to enforce unfair arbitration clauses. If your employer has violated your rights and one of these arbitration clauses applies to you, you should contact an experienced employment lawyer to determine if the arbitration clause is legally valid.

A group of people who worked as FedEx drivers have sued FedEx because they claim FedEx misclassified them as independent contractors. They argue that FedEx should have classified them as employees instead.

By treating the drivers as independent contractors, FedEx saved money on overtime pay, unemployment taxes, payroll taxes, and workers compensation insurance premiums. FedEx likely decided to classify these drivers as independent contractors in order to avoid paying these types of taxes, insurance premiums, and wages. If FedEx should have treated them as employees, it will have to pay them unpaid overtime pay and other compensation.

Even if an employer, like FedEx, labels a group of workers "independent contractors," that does not mean that those workers are automatically independent contractors in the eyes of the law. Whether FedEx should have treated these drivers as employees, instead of independent contractors, depends in large part on the amount of control FedEx exercised over their work. The group of drivers who brought this lawsuit claim that FedEx should have treated them as employees, not independent contractors, because of the amount of control FedEx exercised over their work. The court will have to decide whether the drivers are correct or whether FedEx is correct.

If you believe that your employer has misclassified you as an independent contractor, you should contact an experienced employment lawyer to determine whether your employer has violated your rights.

In the coming legislative session, Republicans are going to try to enact reforms that will impact Maine state employees. For instance, they have proposed an elimination of the Labor Committee in the Maine legislature which has jurisdiction over issues such as workplace safety and wage laws.

Republicans have also proposed so-called "right to work" legislation. Such legislation would allow a state employee to decide that he would rather free-ride on the benefits the union extracts from the state instead of paying union dues. Of course, many individuals would likely take this free ride because they want the benefits of union membership without paying for them. This would likely weaken the union and water down the benefits that state employees enjoy.

Republicans claim that they have proposed these reforms because of an under-funded pension system and other budgetary constraints. If you have an opinion about these, and other, proposed reforms, you should contact your representative.

On December 6, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review a case from California called Dukes v. Wal-Mart. Dukes is a class action in which the plaintiffs claim that Wal-Mart engaged in a widespread practice of sex discrimination. They claim that Wal-Mart discriminated against women with respect to job assignments, pay decisions and training; and retaliates against women who complain about such practices.

The Supreme Court, however, will not decide whether Wal-Mart discriminated against its female employees. Instead, it will decide whether the plaintiffs can bring their case, on behalf of about 500,000 women who worked for Wal-Mart, in the form of a class action. Class actions make it easier for large groups of people to receive compensation when employers violate their rights. For that reason, employers routinely seek to prevent class actions. They try to force employees to bring their cases individually.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in California, decided that the class action could go forward. However, five of the eleven judges on that court believed that the class action should not go forward. Some people who regularly follow the Supreme Court believe that the Supreme Court, due to its bias against class action cases, will reverse the Ninth Circuit's decision.

If you are a Mainer who works for Wal-Mart, and you believe Wal-Mart has discriminated against you, you should contact an experienced employment lawyer to discuss your rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this question next week when it hears arguments in Thompson v. North American Stainless.

According to court filings, in September 2002, Eric Thompson's wife (who was his fiance at the time) filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") against her employer, North American Stainless. Coincidentally, Mr. Thompson worked for North American Stainless too. Her complaint alleged that North American Stainless discriminated against her because of her sex. On February 13, 2003, the EEOC informed North American Stainless that Mr. Thompson's wife had filed this sex discrimination complaint. Two weeks later, North American Stainless decided to fire Mr. Thompson even though it had given him a raise for good performance a few months earlier. Mr. Thompson then filed his own complaint with the EEOC for retaliation claiming that North American Stainless fired him merely because his wife had accused it of sex discrimination.

The EEOC found in Mr. Thompson's favor. However, a federal court in Kentucky and, then, a divided federal appeals court in Ohio both found that the law permitted North American Stainless to retaliate against Mr. Thompson. These courts concluded that the law simply does not protect employees from retaliation when their spouses, or other people they're closely associated with, complain about illegal discrimination.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in this case on December 7, 2010.