Labor and Employment Insights
Analysis and practical guides on labor and employment.
56 articles, checklists, and guides on labor and employment law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace
Pregnancy discrimination law changed more between 2023 and 2025 than in the four decades before it, and this guide brings the whole picture current. It explains the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and its "treat-her-like-everyone-else" command, the Supreme Court's accommodation framework from Young v. UPS, and the landmark Pregnant Workers Fairness Act of 2023 with the EEOC's 2024 final rule that finally created an affirmative duty to accommodate pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions. It covers the PUMP Act's lactation protections, how the FMLA and ADA fit alongside these statutes, and the patchwork of stronger state laws. Worked hypotheticals show how the doctrines play out for real employers and employees, and a practical walk-through covers the EEOC charge process, remedies, damages caps, and prevention. Written so a judge, an HR director, and a worried expectant employee can all follow it, the guide is current to 2026 and flags where the law is still moving.
Workers Compensation Toolkit: For Injured Workers and Employers
This toolkit assembles the working documents of a workers compensation matter, in the order they are needed, with the language that actually produces results. It includes the written notice of injury, the average weekly wage audit worksheet, the utilization review appeal that reverses denials, the treating physician narrative request, the light-duty offer letter, the impairment rating challenge, a settlement comparison worksheet that prices future medical against cash, and the lien and future credit negotiation letters used when a third-party case runs alongside the claim. It serves injured workers, employers building a return-to-work program, and counsel on either side.
Filing and Appealing an Unemployment Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide takes an unemployment claim from the day of separation through a hearing and, if necessary, an appeal of an overpayment. It covers what to do in the first forty-eight hours, how to write the separation statement that a claims examiner reads first, how to ask for the alternative base period, how to prepare for the fact-finding interview, the weekly certification habits that prevent fraud findings, how to prepare and try a telephone hearing including the two cross-examination questions that decide most cases, and how to contest an overpayment and a fraud label separately.
Employment Discrimination Toolkit: Charges, Position Statements, and Litigation
This toolkit supplies the worksheets, letters, and records that build an employment discrimination case, ordered by urgency. It opens with a deadline calculator, because that single question ends more claims than any argument, followed by an incident log and evidence inventory built to be kept contemporaneously. It provides a comparator worksheet keyed to the factors that make a comparator useful, an internal complaint and an accommodation request drafted to name what must be named, and a retaliation log that captures the timeline proximity that proves these claims. It includes a charge drafting worksheet covering the boxes people forget, a dual filing confirmation letter, a position statement response organized around the five kinds of pretext evidence, a mediation preparation sheet, a damages worksheet, a severance review checklist, and a records request.
Employment Discrimination Charge Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a discrimination matter from the deadline through the charge and the ninety days that follow. It leads with finding the filing deadline this week, because that step ends more claims than any legal argument. It sets out the documentation to gather while memory and access still exist, the comparator questions to answer now, and the written internal complaint that removes an employer defense and creates a retaliation claim. It covers drafting the charge so it does not limit later litigation, confirming dual filing, requesting the position statement, and the second deadline after the right-to-sue letter. It closes with severance releases, the ADEA revocation rules, and what to do while a charge is pending.
Background Check and Adverse Action Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Background check compliance fails on formatting and sequencing rather than on judgment, which is why the violations are uniform and the cases are classes. The disclosure must sit alone on its own page; the report and the current summary of rights must be delivered before any decision is communicated; a real waiting period must elapse; and the adverse action notice must contain four specific elements. This checklist covers each in the order the process runs, adds the individualized assessment that federal guidance and a growing number of state and local fair chance laws require, and includes the governance items—a written targeted screen, vendor audit rights, and coverage confirmation—that convert an isolated failure into a defensible program. It also maps the state and municipal fair chance rules that layer additional timing, individualized assessment, and notice requirements on top of the federal sequence.
Unemployment Insurance: Eligibility, Disqualification, Benefits, and Appeals
Unemployment insurance is a federal-state hybrid in which Congress sets conditions on state programs and the states write the substantive rules, which is why the answer to almost every question begins with the name of a state. This article explains the two-part eligibility test of monetary qualification and non-disqualifying separation, what misconduct really means and why the employer bears the burden, when quitting still qualifies, the continuing requirements of ability, availability, and work search, how benefits are computed, the constitutional limits the Supreme Court has imposed on religious and pregnancy-related disqualifications, the appeal structure, and the overpayment and fraud penalties that turn a benefit into a debt.
ERISA Fiduciary Duties for Plan Sponsors and Committees
Almost every company that offers a retirement plan has fiduciaries who do not know they are fiduciaries, exercising discretion they do not know is discretionary, without the documented process that is their only real defense. This article explains what ERISA actually requires. It separates settlor functions from fiduciary functions, identifies who becomes a fiduciary by title and by conduct, and works through the four core duties of loyalty, prudence, plan-document compliance, and diversification. It then covers the prohibited transaction rules and the exemptions that make ordinary plan administration lawful, the fee disclosure regime, and the monitoring obligation that the Supreme Court has addressed in Tibble and Hughes. Sections on excessive fee litigation and the pleading standard, delegation to 3(21) and 3(38) advisers, co-fiduciary and successor liability, correction programs, bonding and insurance, and health plan fiduciary issues follow, with a worked committee calendar, an FAQ, and related reading.
Filing an Employment Discrimination Charge: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through filing a discrimination charge in the order the work has to be done, starting with the deadline that ends more claims than any argument. It explains how to calculate the window, why each discrete act starts its own clock and hostile environment does not, and how to preserve the deadline while you are still deciding. It covers what to write down before memory fades, how to identify comparators while you still have access, and why the internal written complaint is the single most important procedural step an employee can take. It then walks the charge itself—what the intake questionnaire does, how to draft the charge so it does not limit your later claims, and what happens through the position statement, mediation, investigation, and right-to-sue letter—and closes on severance releases and the second deadline nobody expects.
Multistate Employment Compliance Toolkit
A toolkit for building a multistate employment compliance program. One employee working in a new state makes a company a multistate employer subject to that state's entire employment regime, its payroll tax registrations, and usually its corporate income and sales tax nexus, from the first day of work. Most companies discover this one state at a time, through a notice. This toolkit builds the program that prevents it: establishing where employees actually work and controlling where they may work, running the registration sequence before the first paycheck, layering the wage and hour and leave differences that catch employers paying only weekly overtime, handling pay transparency and restrictive covenant limits that reach remote postings and relocations, building a handbook architecture with state addenda that stays current, and choosing whether to build the compliance function or buy it. It closes with the relocation checklist and the legislative tracking cadence that keep the program current once the initial cleanup is done.
Employment Discrimination: Protected Classes, Proof Frameworks, and the Charge Process
Employment discrimination law is a system of deadlines and proof frameworks that decides most cases long before anyone reaches the merits. This article explains who is covered and by which statute, the protected characteristics under federal law and the substantially broader lists many states add, and the difference between disparate treatment and disparate impact. It works through the burden-shifting framework that structures most cases, what a comparator is and why it does more work than any other category of evidence, and the hostile work environment standard with the employer defenses attached to it. It covers reasonable accommodation for disability and religion and the interactive process that decides those claims, retaliation—which is the most commonly filed and frequently the strongest claim—and the charge-filing deadlines that are short, jurisdictional in effect, and the single largest cause of otherwise meritorious claims being lost.
Conducting a Reduction in Force: WARN, Selection Criteria, and Releases
A reduction in force is a project with a legal structure, and the sequence matters as much as the substance. This guide walks it from the business decision through the last separation. It covers the WARN Act and its state analogues, including the aggregation rules that turn a series of small layoffs into a mass layoff, the notice content requirements, and the exceptions that rarely apply. It then covers the selection process, which is where discrimination exposure is created or avoided, including how to define the decisional unit, apply objective criteria, and conduct an adverse impact analysis under privilege before the decisions are final. Later sections address severance design and the OWBPA requirements that make an age release valid, the group disclosure that surprises employers, notification logistics, and the post-separation obligations that continue long after the announcement.