September

Employers have a duty to prevent illegal working and are obliged to carry out prescribed document checks on individuals before they commence work to ensure they have permission to work in the UK. Employers may be liable to an increased civil penalty of up to ?20,000 for each illegal worker if they fail to carry out the necessary checks correctly, or at all, and are found to be employing someone who doesn't have the right to work in the UK. In order to avoid these penalties it is important for employers to be aware of the recent changes to the prescribed document checks.

"Effective August 1, 2014, Louisiana joined at least sixteen other states who have enacted laws prohibiting or restricting employers from accessing employees' personal online accounts - including social media, email accounts, or any other online accounts which the employee uses for anything other than a purely business-related reasons. The ""Personal Online Account Privacy Protection Act,"" states that no employer may ""request or require"" any employee or job applicant to disclose the username, password, or any other authentication information related to a ""personal online account."" Extreme caution should still be exercised whenever dealing with an employee's non-business related social media or similar account."

"Although it is called ""social"" media, individuals using online services such as Facebook or Twitter should not be required to divulge information they wish to keep private, said Senate Majority Leader Dominick J. Ruggerio and Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy. Nor should potential employers or school admissions officers ask applicants to provide their log-in information or to sign into their social media accounts so an interviewer can view their on-line activities. The 2014 Student and Employee Social Media Privacy acts will bar employers from demanding social media-related materials of job applicants, and will establish similar prohibitions for colleges as they consider prospective students."