Labor and Employment Insights

Analysis and practical guides on labor and employment.

37 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.

Labor and EmploymentDamages

Damage Statistics: Labor and Employment Litigation

This guide explains how money is actually awarded in labor and employment lawsuits, from the bread-and-butter of back pay and front pay to the headline-grabbing world of compensatory and punitive damages. It walks through the statutory architecture that controls each category, including the Title VII compensatory and punitive damage caps in 42 U.S.C. 1981a, the Supreme Court's Kolstad standard for punitive damages, and the doubling of liquidated damages under the ADEA and the FLSA. It covers emotional distress proof, attorney's-fee shifting, wage-and-hour collective recoveries, and the steep premium that retaliation claims carry. It also frames damage "statistics" honestly, explaining why publicly available numbers skew low and why the median tells you almost nothing about your own case. The aim is a clear, accurate map of what employment cases are worth and why.

Casey Scott McKayApril 2, 202534 min read

Labor and EmploymentRecruitment and Hiring

Setting Up Payroll and Employment Compliance for a First Hire

Hiring the first employee converts a business into an employer, and the obligations attach immediately, in full, and in every state where the person works. Most of them are administrative and inexpensive; the expensive ones are the classification decision, the overtime exemption decision, and the failure to register in a state before the first paycheck. This guide walks the sequence a founder or small business owner actually needs: deciding whether the person is an employee at all, the federal and state registrations to complete before the first payday, the forms to collect on day one, the insurance to buy, the pay practices to get right, the documents to issue, the benefits questions that arrive sooner than expected, and the records to keep. It closes with the compliance calendar and what changes at each headcount threshold.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 11, 202525 min read

Labor and EmploymentWorkers Compensation

Filing and Litigating a Workers Compensation Claim: A Practical Guide

This guide walks a workers compensation claim from the moment of injury through hearing, appeal, and settlement, from both sides of the table. It explains what to say and to whom in the first forty-eight hours, how the average weekly wage is calculated and why it is worth auditing, how medical control and utilization review actually determine the course of treatment, what happens at a compensation hearing and how it differs from civil court, and how to evaluate a settlement offer against the future medical exposure it extinguishes. It covers the parallel obligations under the FMLA and the ADA that employers routinely miss, the retaliation exposure that dwarfs the claim itself, and the coordination of a third-party case with the compensation lien.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 6, 202528 min read

Labor and EmploymentLeave and Benefits

Drafting a Maternity Leave Policy: Five Things You Should Know

A maternity leave policy is one of the most legally layered documents a small employer will ever write, sitting at the crossroads of at least five federal statutes and a thicket of state programs. This guide walks through the five things every employer should understand before drafting one: the legal floor set by the FMLA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the PUMP Act, and the ADA; why offering more than the minimum is often the smartest business move you can make; how to plan operationally for predictable absences; why the policy is only the beginning of being truly family-friendly; and the legal danger of writing a "mothers only" policy in a world that increasingly expects parental-leave equality. It reflects the law as it stands in mid-2026, including the permanent, enhanced Section 45S paid-leave tax credit and the 2025 court decisions shaping the PWFA. Written for owners, HR professionals, and the lawyers who advise them, it explains every term of art in plain language and flags where the law is unsettled or varies by state. Worked hypotheticals show how the statutes interact in real life, and a closing FAQ tackles the questions employers ask most. This is general legal information, not legal advice.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 1, 202552 min read

Labor and EmploymentTermination and Layoffs

Drafting a Severance and Release Agreement That Holds Up

A severance agreement has one job, which is to make claims go away, and a surprising number of them fail at it. This guide covers what makes a release enforceable and what makes it worthless. It starts with consideration, which must be something the employee is not already owed, and the knowing and voluntary standard courts apply, then works through the OWBPA requirements for waiving age claims including the group disclosure that most employers get wrong. It covers the claims that cannot be released at all and the ones that require special handling, then the restrictive provisions that have become the most heavily regulated part of the document, including confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses that federal labor law, the Speak Out Act, and several state statutes now constrain. Later sections address the operational provisions, tax treatment including Section 409A, and a clause-by-clause drafting walkthrough.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 24, 202525 min read

Labor and EmploymentWorkers Compensation

Workplace Injury Response and Workers Compensation Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A workplace injury sets four clocks running at once: the compensation notice deadline, the OSHA reporting window, the FMLA designation obligation, and the third-party statute of limitations. This checklist runs all four in parallel, with separate tracks for the injured worker and the employer, because their tasks differ at every stage. It covers the first shift, the first week, the benefit calculation audit that is worth thousands of dollars and takes an hour, the medical control and utilization review appeal mechanics that decide whether treatment happens, the return-to-work steps that avoid a retaliation claim, and the settlement evaluation that should never be made without pricing future medical care.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 27, 20258 min read

Labor and EmploymentPolicies and Procedures

Multistate Employment Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist

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 business income and sales tax nexus. The obligations attach from the first day of work and most of them are invisible until a claim, an audit, or a notice arrives. This checklist runs the state-by-state review: the registrations that must be completed before the first paycheck, the wage and hour differences that catch employers paying only weekly overtime, the leave and notice mandates, the pay transparency and salary history rules that reach remote job postings, the restrictive covenant limits that can void an existing agreement when an employee relocates, and the handbook and posting architecture that keeps all of it maintainable. The organizing point is that the employee's physical work location governs, so the first task is always to establish where people actually are.

Casey Scott McKayDecember 17, 20249 min read

Labor and EmploymentArbitration

Employment Arbitration Agreements After Epic Systems and the EFAA

Employment arbitration agreements are simultaneously more enforceable and more limited than they were a decade ago. Epic Systems settled that class and collective action waivers are enforceable, and the Supreme Court has continued to remove obstacles to compelling arbitration. At the same time, Congress carved sexual assault and sexual harassment claims out of the Federal Arbitration Act entirely, state legislatures have tested the boundaries of preemption, transportation worker exemptions have expanded, and mass arbitration has turned the employer-favorable fee structure into a liability. This article covers what the Federal Arbitration Act does and does not reach, how the EFAA operates and how broadly it applies, the doctrines that still defeat agreements, and how to draft and administer a program that actually works.

Casey Scott McKayNovember 30, 202425 min read

Labor and EmploymentEmployee Data and Privacy

Employee Monitoring and Workplace Privacy: A Practical Guide

Employers can monitor a great deal and are prohibited from monitoring some of it, and the line is drawn by a patchwork of federal wiretap law, state statutes with sharply different consent rules, labor law, and the employer's own policies. This guide covers what is permitted and what the practice requires. It starts with the reasonable expectation of privacy framework and the notice and policy foundation that eliminates most exposure, then works through the categories: computer and email monitoring, productivity and keystroke software, video surveillance, location tracking, telephone and video call recording, and biometric systems. It covers the statutes that impose the strictest requirements, including all-party consent recording laws and state biometric privacy acts with private rights of action, and the state consumer privacy laws that now reach employee data. Later sections address personal devices, remote work, social media and off-duty conduct, testing, and investigations.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 29, 202426 min read

Labor and EmploymentWage and Hour

Wage and Hour Law Under the FLSA: Overtime, Exemptions, and Off-the-Clock Work

Wage and hour law produces more employment litigation than every discrimination statute combined, and almost all of it is avoidable. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires a minimum wage and overtime at one and a half times the regular rate for hours worked over forty in a week, and it exempts a narrow set of employees who satisfy both a salary test and a duties test. This article explains how those pieces actually work: how to compute the regular rate and what must be included in it, why the salary basis test defeats employers who make improper deductions or pay a day rate, and why job titles are legally irrelevant to the duties analysis. It works through the executive, administrative, professional, computer, and outside sales exemptions and the highly compensated shortcut, including the Supreme Court's decision in Helix Energy v. Hewitt on day rates. It then addresses the off-the-clock claims that drive most litigation, including the Portal-to-Portal Act, donning and doffing, integral and indispensable activities after Integrity Staffing v. Busk, remote work, and the burden-shifting rule of Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery that punishes employers with bad records. Sections on recordkeeping, collective actions, liquidated damages, willfulness, and the state law overlay follow, with an audit checklist, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKaySeptember 5, 202426 min read

Labor and EmploymentPolicies and Procedures

Remote and Hybrid Workforce Toolkit

Remote and hybrid work raises two distinct sets of questions that companies routinely conflate. The management questions — how people collaborate, how performance is measured, whether hybrid schedules are coordinated — are real and are not legal problems. The legal questions turn almost entirely on one fact: where the employee physically works, which determines the applicable employment law, the payroll registrations, the workers compensation coverage, and frequently the company's tax nexus. This toolkit addresses both. It covers eligibility and approval, the approved work locations control and the reporting obligation that makes it enforceable, timekeeping and pay for remote non-exempt employees, equipment and expenses, home workspace safety, security and monitoring, accommodation requests, international work, and the performance and inclusion practices that determine whether the arrangement actually works.

Casey Scott McKaySeptember 4, 202412 min read

Labor and EmploymentHR Policies

Hiring and Onboarding Compliance Toolkit

Hiring is the densest compliance sequence in employment law, and nearly every step is governed by a rule that differs by state and by city. This toolkit runs the sequence in order — the posting and its pay range, the application and the questions that may not be asked, the interview and the automated tools that screen it, the conditional offer that triggers the background check, the FCRA and fair chance process, verification and payroll setup, and the documents signed on day one that determine whether inventions are assigned and disputes are arbitrated. It closes with the multistate architecture that lets a single process work everywhere, and the records that make each step defensible. It closes with the onboarding paperwork and the restrictive covenant questions that should be settled before the first day rather than after it.

Casey Scott McKayAugust 10, 202414 min read