News

Bankrupt advertising tech firm Sizmek Inc. has been hit by a proposed class action complaint in New York bankruptcy court claiming it laid off dozens of employees from its Manhattan office without warning in January.

Ex-Sizmek employee Jared McKinley Kreiner claimed in a complaint filed Thursday that he and at least 50 others were laid off by the firm on Jan. 31, without the 60-day warning required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

                  *                    *                     *

In the adversary action, Kreiner, who said he was employed at Sizmek...

Many courts require workers alleging job discrimination to compare themselves to similarly situated colleagues who didn’t face bias. A federal appeals court in Atlanta recently suggested it did those workers a favor by relaxing its definition for those comparable coworkers.

But in the same decision, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit also gave employers a boost. The court said judges should thoroughly assess such comparator evidence when workers make their initial showing of discrimination, before employers have to give their reason for taking an allegedly biased action.

...

A California federal judge has granted conditional collective action status to unsuccessful job applicants accusing PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of bias against older candidates, saying the problems that led him to refuse to certify the collective in July had been fixed.

U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar granted lead plaintiffs Steve Rabin and John Chapman's bid for conditional collective action certification on Friday, saying the plaintiffs had adequately narrowed the scope of the group they wanted to represent and noting that PwC would still have another chance to challenge it. Rabin and...

The Labor Department proposed a new regulation April 1 to limit shared wage and hour liability for companies in franchise and staffing arrangements.

The proposed rule narrows the situations in which businesses can be considered “joint employers” of a group of workers. The question often comes up when workers at a franchise restaurant try to sue the franchiser for unpaid minimum wages and overtime. It’s also been at the center of debates over whether companies should be required to bargain with workers provided by a staffing firm.

“This proposal will reduce uncertainty over joint employer...

After years of criticism, Facebook announced on Tuesday that it would stop allowing advertisers in key categories to show their messages only to people of a certain race, gender or age group.

The company said that anyone advertising housing, jobs or credit — three areas where federal law prohibits discrimination in ads — would no longer have the option of explicitly aiming ads at people on the basis of those characteristics.

The changes are part of a settlement with groups that have sued Facebook over these practices in recent years, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National...

CONTACT:

Ana Blinder, ACLU, 646-905-8877, @email
Contact: Sally J. Abrahamson at @email or call (202) 847-4400
Amy Fetherolf, Communication Workers of America, @email

NEW YORK — A historic civil rights settlement was announced with Facebook today following a variety of anti-discrimination legal actions. The settlement encompasses sweeping changes that the tech giant will make to its paid advertising platform to prevent discrimination in employment, housing, and credit advertising.

Since late 2016, Facebook has faced legal pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, Outten & Golden LLP,...