Grace is earned, not owed.

On election night, Ohio's governor-elect reportedly let a phone call from her opponent go to voicemail. Vivek Ramaswamy said in his concession speech that his team "left her a message to congratulate her on her victory." Amy Acton didn't pick up.

Some people will call that petty. Concession calls are a ritual. The loser calls, the winner answers, and everyone performs a little grace for the cameras and the country.

That misses the point.

Two weeks before the election, the Ramaswamy campaign spent millions to air an ad featuring Acton's estranged mother, who called her daughter a liar and suggested she needed help. Acton has spoken openly about being removed from her mother's home at age 12, after her stepfather was charged with raping her. The ad drew condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike, including Governor DeWine, who called on the campaign to pull it. The campaign defended it and continued to run it.

That wasn't a policy disagreement or even a hard-hitting contrast ad. It was a deliberate decision to weaponize the most painful chapter of someone's childhood.

So did Governor-Elect Acton owe Ramaswamy a conversation on election night? And what do we owe anyone who has intentionally mistreated us?

We teach people, especially professionals, to be the bigger person. Don't burn bridges. Take the call. Smile at the handshake. That is good advice for ordinary friction, like a sharp-elbowed negotiation, a bruising cross-examination, or a rival who plays hard but plays fair.

It's not good advice, however, for someone who looked at your worst moments and decided to use them against you. Grace is a gift. It is not a debt that accrues to whoever happens to be on the other side of the table. Someone who intentionally mistreats you does not get to cash in on your civility the moment it becomes convenient for them.

I see this in workplaces all the time. The manager who undermined an employee for months and then expects a warm exit interview. The executive who ran a smear campaign and then wants a "clean break" and a glowing reference. The business partner who went scorched-earth and now wants to "move forward." They want the benefits of decency without having practiced any.

You can be professional without being warm. You can be polite without being available. You can decline the call and still behave lawfully, avoid retaliation, and keep your own conduct beyond reproach. Boundaries and bitterness are not the same thing.

Respect is something people earn by how they treat others. When someone spends weeks and millions of dollars showing you who they are, you are allowed to believe them.

Leaders should remember that before they approve the next ad, the next email, or the next performance review. Your conduct is also your reputation. And sometimes the consequence of your conduct is a voicemail.

Here's what I read this week that you should read, too. 

Project 2025's Impact on Employment Policy and Practice is Controversial but Undeniable — HR Daily Advisor

Employees Had to Arrive Early. The Manager Had the Keys. Who Pays for the Wait? — The Employer Handbook

What Sycophantic AI Can Cost Your Organization — Harvard Business Review

Till Dissolution Do Us Part: Inside Weil's Biglaw Breakup — Above the Law

EEOC signals rollback of Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations — HR Dive

Horseshoe Casino Baltimore to pay $150,000 to settle bias suit — The Baltimore Sun

Lockheed Will Pay $29.5 Million Over Claims It Discriminated Against White Employees — 24/7 Wall St.

Democrats seize Congress in sweeping midterm repudiation of Trump — Virginia Lawyers Weekly

'Are You With Us, the Workers, Or Are You With the Big Tech Billionaires?' — Politico

Self-checkout was supposed to cut costs. Instead, it created a problem retailers didn't anticipate — Fast Company

Columbus is losing breweries amid rising costs, lower demand — NBC4 Columbus 

     

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"Quite simply, full means full and any means any."

That's a federal judge explaining to a plaintiff the meaning of a general release.

Jackilyn Bunnell sued William Beaumont Hospital for pregnancy discrimination and FMLA interference. She lost on summary judgment, won a partial reversal at the Sixth Circuit, and on remand sat down for a settlement conference with Judge Brandy McMillion. After hours of negotiation, the parties reached a deal that included a full release of all claims.

Then the deal started to move.

First she wanted a structured settlement. The court reminded her that was never a term. Next she wanted the release narrowed to employment claims, so she could carve out possible medical malpractice claims involving her minor child. Then came still more asks: 21 additional names in the non-disparagement clause, a different job title in her separation letter, and a third-party number for employment verification.

The timing here is what matters. The malpractice and other concerns never came up during negotiations. They surfaced only after the structured settlement idea died. That wasn't negotiated either.

For employers, the lesson is that the scope of the release is a material term. Settle it in the room. Put "full release of all claims" in the term sheet and get signatures before anyone leaves the conference. You won't always have a judge who sat through the whole negotiation and remembers every word. "He said/she said" motions to enforce settlements are messy, expensive, and uncertain.

If you're paying for a general release, make sure you get one, and make sure the other side understands it before they sign. A general release is just that: general.

     

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Notch 8 Brewery's owner told a bartender he would not tolerate her "backdoor" conversations with coworkers. The NLRB just said those words are direct evidence of animus.

Rebecca Spitzer had been a beertender at the brewery for about seven weeks. She heard coworkers complaining about long hours and missed breaks, and told them they might be owed overtime and could contact the NLRB or the Department of Labor. Then she contacted the Department of Labor herself.

Two days later, the owner called her into his office, angrily said someone he trusted had told him what she was doing, and sent her home. That same day, the brewery posted on Facebook that it was hiring beertenders.

The NLRB just affirmed that decision. Sending her home, posting her job, and cutting off her scheduling access would lead a prudent person to believe she'd been fired. The Board also rebuked the brewery's claims of misconduct. It never investigated them during Spitzer's employment and raised them for the first time only after the charge was filed. That's classic pretext, said the Board.

I have three key lessons for employers to take away from this case.

1. When an employee says pay or breaks look wrong, or you have a safety or some other workplace issue, you have a compliance question to answer. Fix the problem if there is one. Explain it if there isn't. Firing the messenger turns the question into a federal labor charge or a lawsuit.

2. Nothing here required a union. Employees talking about overtime and breaks is protected concerted activity, and one employee's call to a state agency can be a logical outgrowth of that.

3. If a union is sniffing around your workers, retaliation is the best organizing pitch you can hand it. The organizer's whole argument is that speaking up gets you punished unless someone has your back. Fire the person who raised a concern and you've proven the point. At Notch 8, coworkers followed the whole thing in group texts, and one wrote that firing a whistleblower "sounds kinda illegal." Your workforce reads the same signals.

Employee complaints are free advice. Acting on them costs little, and punishing them costs far more. You don't want the most expensive thing on your menu to be retaliation.

     

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A proposed class action against Ashley Furniture alleges the company buried a noncompete in its handbook-style "Culture Guide" and didn't disclose the terms until after workers accepted their job offers.

This case raises an important question for employers to consider: can you enforce a noncompete that lives only in your handbook?

Probably not, and your own handbook is why.

Most handbooks say they are not a contract. We put that language there to defeat implied-contract claims. But it cuts both ways. If the handbook isn't a contract, it can't be the contract that restricts someone from working after they leave.

The lesson is that a separate, signed agreement changes the outcome. In ASI System Integration v. Mollenkopf, the handbook provision was unenforceable because of its disclaimer, but the employer survived dismissal because the employee had signed a separate stand-alone agreement.

There's a second problem. A handbook applies to everyone, so the noncompete does too: the receptionist, the stocker, and the sales director who holds your biggest accounts. Under the law of most states (including Ohio), a covenant must be no greater than needed to protect legitimate interests like trade secrets and customer goodwill. Most employees have none. In Elite Cleaning, for example, the court found the employer's interest weak as to an unskilled worker with no trade secrets. A blanket restriction invites the inference that the goal is controlling labor, not protecting the business.

Courts can narrow an overbroad covenant rather than void it, but that's a gamble, not a plan.

The fix is to use a stand-alone agreement, signed by the employee, tied to a legitimate interest and tailored to the role. Reserve it for employees who actually have something to protect, and use confidentiality and non-solicitation terms for everyone else. And keep it out of the handbook if you have hopes of enforcement.

If your noncompete is a paragraph on page 47 of a handbook that applies to every employee, you probably don't have one to enforce at all.

     

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Last week, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind its 2012 guidance on arrest and conviction records. If you're wondering whether criminal background checks are now a free-for-all for employers, I'm here to tell you they're not.

The EEOC's guidance was never the law. Title VII is. Disparate impact is written into the statute, and private plaintiffs don't need the EEOC's blessing to bring those claims. Disparate treatment (applying harsher screening standards to applicants because of race or national origin) is still illegal. And the Fair Credit Reporting Act, along with state and local fair-chance and ban-the-box laws, haven't gone anywhere.

What changes is agency enforcement. That's it. The reality is that the EEOC has largely moved away from disparate impact cases. Expect more right-to-sue letters and fewer EEOC lawsuits. But those claims won't disappear. They'll move into court, where you're the defendant.

Here's what the 2012 guidance said:

Arrests aren't convictions. An arrest alone doesn't prove anyone did anything wrong.

Convictions can justify an exclusion, but the offense needs to matter to the job. Embezzlement matters for a bookkeeper. It matters a lot less for a forklift operator.

Blanket bans are a red flag. Relevance depends on the nature and gravity of the offense, how much time has passed, and the nature of the job.

Individualized assessments matter. Give applicants an opportunity to explain their records before pulling an offer.

So what should employers do now that the EEOC has rescinded its guidance?

1. Keep your process. The guidance is gone, but its logic remains a sound way to defend against a Title VII disparate impact claim: job-related and consistent with business necessity.

2. Don't turn arrests into automatic rejections. Without more, an arrest record is a weak reason to reject an applicant.

3. Audit blanket exclusions. A "no felonies, ever" policy invites legal scrutiny unless a law requires it.

4. Apply your screens consistently. Inconsistent enforcement can become evidence of disparate treatment.

5. Document your reasons. If you reject someone because of a criminal record, write down the offense, how old it is, and why it matters to the job.

6. Follow the FCRA. When using third-party background reports, disclosure, authorization, and applicable pre-adverse and adverse action notice requirements still apply.

7. Check state and local law. Fair-chance rules vary by jurisdiction. Know yours before changing anything.

8. Train your hiring managers. Managers who improvise create risk. Give them a process and make sure they follow it.

Employers, the EEOC may have stepped back. Plaintiffs' lawyers haven't. Plan and act accordingly.

     

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