Fisher Phillips has been tracking the changing face of legal developments as Covid-19 continues to affect the employment landscape and they have uncovered some important trends in employment law since the beginning of 2021’s “hot summer.”
According to the FP tracker, the summer saw a huge uptick in employment-based litigation, a trend FP does not foresee slowing down as the country has failed to adequately deal with the rise of the Delta variant and the Biden administration adds new wrinkles with vaccine mandates. This summer, FP saw a more than 50% increase in workplace lawsuits compared to 2020, and this surge seems strongly correlated to the rise of the Delta variant, just as previous spates of lawsuits corresponded to national Covid spikes.
Among the other insights in the report, were which sectors of the economy saw the greatest number of lawsuits as well as which types of lawsuits were most popular. The healthcare industry continues to experience the major share of Covid-related lawsuits with 718 cases. Retail, manufacturing, government, and hospitality rounded out the top five.
Remote work or leave issues, employment discrimination and retaliation or whistleblowing suits comprised 78% of the caseload. FP noted that they have only just started tracking vaccine-related claims, but warned that these would most likely rise sharply in the face of stricter government and employer mandates.
