State V Federal: A Comparison of Employment Law

State v Federal: A Comparison of Employment Law

Jack Amore

University of Phoenix

Employment Law/MGT 434

Alicia Phidd, M.P.S., J.D.

May 23, 2006

State v Federal: A Comparison of Employment Law

Employment Law covers a vast arena in the modern workplace. Only by a thorough knowledge of the different areas employment law covers can managers be effective in insulating their company’s exposure to possible devastating lawsuits. In addition to the many laws and regulations set forth by the federal government that affect institutions across the United States, individual states and municipalities have enacted their own sets of provisions to which managers must adhere while operating locally. In this paper I will explain how the federal and state systems of government may or may not differ in their application of employment laws, and by example a specific employment protection that is provided by the state of Florida that is not offered by the federal system.

Federal Employment Law

The United States Department of Labor is the controlling agency that deals with matters of federal employment law. Posted in plain language on their website are many of the areas covered by employment law statutes which may include recruitment, wages and hours of work, safety and health standards, health benefits and retirement standards, working conditions, and even non-U.S. citizen’s work authorization (United States Department of Labor, n.d.). State laws typically mirror Federal statutes but may include additional protections for the employer or the employee, such as prohibitions based on marital status or sexual orientation (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2004). As stated, there are many different areas of workplace law: here I will examine three of them; recruitment, wages and hours of work, and safety and health standards.

Recruitment

One of the main functions of any company is to hire employees, and this may be the single source of the majority of discrimination actions faced by employers. The regulations that cover recruitment are covered by a number of Federal and State statutes, among them being Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967), the Veterans’ Rehabilitation Act (1973), the Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986), the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), as well state laws that encourage fair employment practices but are different from state to state (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2004, chap. 4).

Wages and Hours of Work

The United States Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) established basic