Alston & Bird LLP

USA
October 21 2008

The federal Worker Adjustment Notification and Retraining Act (the “WARN Act”) generally requires employers to give affected employees and local government officials advance notice of a plant closing or a mass layoff at a single site of employment. New York recently enacted a new law that is patterned on the WARN Act, but is broader in several significant respects. This enactment, officially entitled the New York State Worker Adjustment Notification and Retraining Act (the “NY WARN Act”), Labor Law §§ 860–860-i, will take effect February 1, 2009.  

 

Court upholds property owner’s right to prohibit access to property by nonemployee union organizers

Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge

Sheryl D. Hanley and Nancy H. Van der Veer

USA
October 16 2008

In Salmon Run Shopping Center LLC v. National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to enforce an order issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requiring a private shopping mall to allow nonemployee union organizers to distribute literature to mall patrons that was critical of and targeted at a mall tenant. 

 

Connecticut law creates new duties for employers and businesses that collect Social Security numbers

Perkins Coie LLP

Matt Beebe

USA
October 20 2008

A Connecticut law effective October 1, 2008, requires businesses, including employers, to describe protections for Social Security numbers in a privacy policy. The privacy policy must include assurances that the business will:    

• Protect the confidentiality of Social Security Numbers;


• Prohibit unlawful disclosure of Social Security numbers; and


• Limit access to Social Security numbers.

Businesses must also publish or publicly display the policy. For a business that collects Social Security Numbers from its customers this could be satisfied with an update to a privacy policy posted on its Internet site. For employers, publication through employee manuals or an internally available data security standard should satisfy the requirement based on a reasonable reading of the law.

The law also creates duties to safeguard broader categories of personal information. Personal information must be protected from misuse by third parties and destroyed, erased or made unreadable before disposal. Similar general data protection and disposal requirements already exist in several states including, California and Texas.