ELLN Chair’s Newsletter and Join us at the July ACC Employment & Labor Law Teleconference Meeting Tomorrow!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 3 is the regular monthly teleconference of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Employment & Labor Law Network (ELLN), where I am Chair this year. This post is an open invite to in house counsel who are not already attending our ELLN monthly meetings to join us! My Chair’s newsletter appears below.
If you are an in-house counsel, and you are not an ACC member or an ELLN member (or even if you are and you haven’t joined us recently), we would love for you to attend our monthly teleconference and join our active community.
Join ACC here: https://www.acc.com/membership/become-a-member
If you haven’t joined our calls recently, or have never heard of ACC or ELLN, now is a great opportunity to check us out. Each month before our meeting, I will post our agenda here and elsewhere in social media as encouragement to join our merry bunch on the first Wednesday (generally) each month at 3:00 p.m. EST.
Joining the call is as easy as clicking the big red button below and logging in or registering.
Hello ELLN Members!
Tomorrow (Wednesday, July 1) is the Association of Corporate Counsel Employment and Labor Law Network’s regular monthly teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT. June 30 marks the end of Pride Month. This year, June’s Pride Month commemoration was unique, happening during the coronavirus pandemic and amid a broader conversation about injustices. Today marks an “end,” but I want to put that in quotes. Today is an end of an annual commemoration of one marginalized community, but it is not the end of our journey to strengthen diversity, equity, inclusivity, and outreach.
Black Lives Matter, systemic discrimination and racism, the pandemic, the economic impact of the lockdowns on already struggling disadvantaged communities, the people marching to support change, and even the Boogaloo Boys and people who refuse to wear masks as a “political” statement: these are national and global issues we wrestle with now. However, more importantly, they are personal ones. In the past several months, we have surfaced societal inequities that existed before COVID-19, but we have also learned more about ourselves, I hope. We have discovered what we truly value, how we deal with unprecedented challenges, and what matters to us. Every day, as we reevaluate our lives, we change, just as our world has over the past several months. What do we do with those individual changes? I do not mean collectively as a country, performatively on social media, or even as the ELLN. What do we each do? We move into a new phase of our work as a society: taking concrete, measurable individual action.
That’s the focus of our Legal Quick Hit this month. Our session will focus on the steps lawyers can take to address systemic racism within their organizations and how legal departments can lead change. Two principals from our Network Sponsor Jackson Lewis (Kevin Reese and Donny English) will join the ELLN’s Immediate Past Chair and Facebook AGC Eric de los Santos in a session moderated by Jackson Lewis’s Nicky Jatana. We encourage all of you to attend this important Legal Quick Hit.
Also, congratulations to Eric for his new role at Facebook! We love to celebrate your accomplishments, personal and professional, so please keep us in the loop so we can do that.
Here is the registration button for tomorrow (ELLN leaders, check your invite for your specific link):
You can also click this URL: https://acc.inreachce.com/Details/Information/e6b7006f-fad1-42ed-b737-b7b8a9b8ffc5
Registration is free and. Please be sure to continue to visit our ELLN forum/message board at https://community.acc.com/. Every day we are addressing important COVID-19 issues and other questions you have on employment and labor issues. We would love to hear from you and see you (virtually anyway)! You can also post completely anonymously anytime.
We will also hear from our subcommittees, and we can celebrate your accomplishments and work on our collective challenges. Our July Music Quick Pick appears below!
Of course, in this time, remember that phrase “Practice Social Distancing.” So many of us in our community are facing more challenges with coronavirus outbreaks than we were last month or even back in April. We have to fight every day to build a more just society, and we have to vote, and we have to fill out our Census forms, and we have to figure out how to put food on our plates. Deploy empathy, perspective, and agency to effect change. But also, make sure you are six feet apart, masked up, and safe. We don’t want to lose you or your loved ones to this illness. We need you and your contributions!
As always, thank you for being an ELLN member, for your attendance at tomorrow’s meeting, and for your continued participation (especially at this time). We appreciate having you with us and welcome your feedback on how we can make ELLN membership an even better value for you. Please reach out anytime.
Stay safe and healthy!
Doug Hass
Chair, Association of Corporate Counsel Employment and Labor Law Network
