The Denver Annual CLE Conference planning is continuing apace, and you'll soon be receiving details about the programming and registration. Please be sure to look for the early-bird registration, with its registration fee of $375.

One of our Section's great strengths is its superb publications. We've recently received our good friend (from BNA) Tim Darby's latest report to the Section's Publications Committee, showing two new editions and numerous supplements published since October 2007. With our partnership with BNA, we publish no fewer than 23 books and treatises, covering all areas of labor and employment law. These publications provide a valuable resource to practitioners, and they earn our Section substantial revenues that we use to underwrite our Section programs and committees' activities. I'm sure you've noticed that a number of our publications are frequently cited by courts and agencies in their decisions.

Section members can take great pride in this aspect of the Section's activities, but what I want to emphasize here is the significant role that you can play in our publications, and the opportunity they present for you to be involved in an important Section activity. As you know, the Section operates on the basis of consensus between labor and management, and our Section publications follow the same principle. This means they are typically written and reviewed by members representing unions, employees and employers, and neutrals, to ensure that they are balanced in tone and content. We rely on our Section members to contribute to this process by participating in the writing and reviewing of text. This process also provides a valuable educational experience particularly for young lawyers. It's been said before but it bears repeating that if you become involved in this process, you'll learn a lot of law and become a better lawyer for it. If you want to become involved, you'll be welcomed. You can find out more about this on our website and by contacting the committee co-chairs of the committee publication you are interested in.

Section Development Fund applications are due by June 1. Successful applicants can receive funding from the Section for attending a committee meeting and/or the Section Annual CLE Conference. We want to clarify that an applicant must certify they cannot participate without financial support, and that their organization is unable or unwilling to finance these activities.

Registration is now open!
Sign up to attend the premiere CLE Conference in Labor and Employment Law.

A Call to Sponsors:
Help us continue to bring the Section’s largest conference to the Labor & Employment Law community, and enhance your firm’s visibility by being a sponsor of our 2008 Annual CLE Conference in Denver. To find out more about the many exciting sponsorship opportunities available, contact Tracey Moore in the Section office at mooret@staff.abanet.org.

Introduction: In a recent decision, the Supreme Court defers to Congress, not private contractual rights regarding arbitration agreements under the Federal Arbitration Act's ("FAA").

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We are pleased to announce that the Fifth Annual Competition has been expanded to include regional competitions in Boston and Seattle in addition to Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, DC.

The Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association established the Trial Advocacy Competition to introduce law students to the challenges and rewards of employment and labor litigation.

Law students who participate in the Competition have the opportunity to develop their trial advocacy skills in a mock courtroom experience.

The Competition offers participating students a forum in which they may develop the skills they will be using as practitioners, and a chance to meet and network with fellow law students and labor and employment law practitioners ans judges.

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As a part of its Hot Topic series, the Flash will highlight at least one special substantive presentation from the Annual CLE each month leading up to the Colorado Conference.

Technology such as telephones and datalines, computers and their networks, and Internet including e-mail, are now part of almost every American workplace – certainly of every workplace structured around an office environment, and increasingly of many that are not. The risks to the employer of employee use of modern technology are not just the superficial ones of diversion of resources. Serious dangers, much intensified by the power of these technologies, arise in areas including but not limited to dissemination of trade secrets, debasement of the workplace by sexual harassment and other methods, company responsibility for employee torts (and even crimes such as securities fraud), and direct injury to the company through fraud, embezzlement and sabotage. This paper by Douglas Dexter focuses on some of the issues raised by employee misuse of employer technology, and the management of the conflicts which can result.

Employee Misuse of Employer Technology | By: Douglas Dexter | Chair, Employment Practice Group | Farella Braun + Martel LLP | San Francisco

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Each year, since 1979, this committee has held timely and informative midwinter meetings overseas to exchange views face-to-face with leading labor relations and employment law experts in foreign capitals and leading cities ( Prague, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, London, Brussels, Luxembourg, Geneva, Paris, Dusseldorf, Munich, Rome, Vienna, Madrid, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and Stockholm). As an important task force for the Section, committee members study and report on current developments in foreign labor relations law and employment law practices, particularly those affecting U.S. multi-national enterprises operating abroad.

The committee also maintains on-going liaison with key spokesmen for the labor and employment branches of international agencies, such as the European Community (EC), International Labor Organization (ILO), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which establish transnational codes of conduct applicable to international labor law.

Committee planning meetings are also held each year in the United States and at the ABA Annual Meeting. Periodic updates and background papers are also furnished to committee members several times a year. These reports interpret the latest labor law developments in those foreign nations and international bodies previously visited or about to be visited by the committee. The committee has published International Labor and Employment Laws, Volume I, Second Edition, with 2007 Cumulative Supplement, treatises providing an overview of labor and employment law in the major industrialized countries.