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It might seem like vanilla stuff for some of the world’s almost capitalized companies in the world to provide extra support to employees during a global pandemic, but not so at companies like Facebook and Twitter, where a rift has formed between parents, non-parents and employers over the companies’ policy responses to daycare and school closures.

It appears employers continue to terminate workers who are supposed to be protected under the FFCRA. This week, we’ve highlighted several cases where employees were waiting for test results or already diagnosed with Covid-19 and subsequently fired when seeking paid leave.

There was some decent news this week in the employment outlook, depending on how you look at it. The positive is that roughly 1.37 million jobs were added this week and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.4 percent. The negative is that nearly 20 million Americans remain unemployed and of those 1.37 million jobs added over 230,000 hires are census workers, who will be out of a job shortly.

For some, early retirement is a chance to do something else, to spend more time with family, or pursue a passion put off by work. But for others, early retirement, also known by the euphemistic “involuntary separation,” has been an unwelcome occurrence and reminder of people’s status within the workforce, and this trend has been increasing in recent times.

The jobs report, released early Thursday morning, indicates job losses persist, with first-time unemployment claims above 1 million for the second straight week and continuing claims still north of 14 million. This comes as Congress remains on summer recess, having failed to shore up an extension of the enhanced stimulus that was propping up the economy. With the unemployment numbers still shaky, this week we’re taking a closer look at just who is being affected.

Employers and employees who have questions about parental leave should talk to an experienced labor and employment law attorney. Learn how we can help.

New social distancing norms and efforts to limit the number of people in workplaces as a result of COVID-19 has resulted in a major increase of employees working from home. How does NYS workers’ compensation cover telecommuters?

We first started hearing the term “pod” a couple weeks after lockdown began. Initially, it was something to describe a collection of immediate family or friends with whom we could safely interact. At the same time, people started using the term to refer to extended child care units. Parents began banding together to pool child care resources when daycare facilities closed, schools shut down, and the domestic care industry was no longer an option.

This week, we’re going to spotlight one of the hot button issues at the intersection of employment and pandemic: how parents are going to cope in a fall without schools.

Since we started this weekly blog post in May, we've read and summarized over 50 complaints filed under the new leave law. As we’ve pointed out, many of these complaints follow almost a template, with workers being terminated for either taking legally-allowed precautions to protect fellow workers from potential infection or for having legitimate reasons to take leave, often to care for a family member or child.

It’s not every day that a blue chip company decides to sue a former executive, let alone its erstwhile CEO, but this is exactly what McDonald’s did by suing Steve Easterbrook, who had been fired last year for inappropriate conduct, specifically, sexting with an employee.

We’ve all needed one at some point –– a doctor’s note explaining that we’re out for the count on some otherwise necessary aspect of work or school, at least temporarily. Many people are realizing that because of COVID, they don’t feel safe at work due to a disability, and need to modify their pre-pandemic job to accommodate this new reality. In this type of situation, what do you ask your doctor for? What does such a note need to include to help you successfully advocate for your rights?