Although it may appear that most employment law is federal, employment discrimination is largely governed by state law because Congress has so declared it. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 tells federal courts to defer to state agencies to enforce antidiscrimination provisions of parallel state statutes with remedies similar to those of the federal law. Moreover, many states have gone beyond federal law in banning certain forms of discrimination. Thus well before enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, more than forty states prohibited such discrimination in private employment. More than a dozen states ban employment discrimination based on marital status, a category not covered by federal law. Two states have laws that protect those that may be considered “overweight.” Two states and more than seventy counties or municipalities ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; most large companies have offices or plants in at least one of these jurisdictions. By contrast, federal law has no statutory law dealing with sexual orientation.
KEY TAKEAWAY
There are a number of important federal employment laws collective bargaining or discrimination. These include the federal plant-closing act, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. At the state level, workers’ compensation laws preempt common-law claims against employers for work-related injuries, and state equal opportunity employment laws provide remedies for certain kinds of workplace discrimination that have no parallel at the federal level.
EXERCISES
- United Artists is a corporation doing business in Texas. United Pension Fund is a defined-contribution employee pension benefit plan sponsored by United Artists for employees. Each employee has his or her own individual pension account, but plan assets are pooled for investment purposes. The plan is administered by the board of trustees. From 1977 to 1986, seven of the trustees made a series of loans to themselves from the plan. These trustees did not (1) require the borrowers to submit a written application for the loans, (2) assess the prospective borrower’s ability to repay loans, (3) specify a period in which the loans were to be repaid, or (4) call the loans when they remained unpaid. The trustees also charged less than fair-market-value interest for the loans. The secretary of labor sued the trustees, alleging that they had breached their fiduciary duty in violation of ERISA. Who won? 1
- Arrow Automotive Industries remanufactures and distributes automobile and truck parts. Its operating plants produce identical product lines. The company is planning to open a new facility in Santa Maria, California. The employees at the Arrow plant in Hudson, Massachusetts, are represented by a union, the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. The Hudson plant has a history of unprofitable operations. The union called a strike when the existing collective bargaining agreement expired and a new agreement could not be reached. After several months, the board of directors of the company voted to close the striking plant. The closing would give Arrow a 24 percent increase in gross profits and free capital and equipment for the new Santa Maria plant. In addition, the existing customers of the Hudson plant could be serviced by the Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant, which is currently being underutilized. What would have to be done if the plant-closing act applied to the situation? 2
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