Club Meeting – September 8th, 2016

To open the meeting we had two special guests give our invocation.  Father Rene Blot (L) and Father Romel Eustache (R) were in Salem to honor member Dr. Tom Fame for his 20 years of service to the people of the Cabestor Valley in Haiti.  The club has been proud to support the Haiti Project and recognized Tom as our 2016 Outstanding Citizen.

In keeping with the recent holiday weekend today’s meeting program was an “Employment Law Update” by Todd Leeson of Gentry Locke Attorneys.  Todd is a fellow Rotarian and past President of the Roanoke-Downtown club.  He has over 26 years of experience representing and advising Virginia employers in employment and labor law matters and litigation.

Labor law is an expansive topic and Todd did his best to give members a quick overview of the current “hot topics”.  Todd distributed an outline to take notes.  The six points of interest listed helped to illustrate how federal agencies were seeking to expand the current scope of areas they regulation or define the impact of new regulations or where the pace of change in the economy was running ahead of regulators.

Below is the list of discussion points, if you have any questions we are sure Todd would be happy to answer any inquiries you might have. (Just click on his name above)

1. The EEOC seeks to expand the law. Two examples: LGBT protection under Title VII , and reasonable accommodation under ADA.

2. Employment retaliation and whistleblower claims are exploding.

3. The NLRB is protecting employee dissent on social media and in workplace.

4. The new overtime regulations, in which employees making less than $47,476 will be entitled to overtime pay, are set to take effect 12/1/2016.

5. Our current employment (and other) laws are not designed to address new issues relating to the emerging “gig” economy.

6. The next President will have a profound impact on employment law.

Happy Hiring!

We thank Robert Dementi for his photographs.