Welcome to Labor of Law. What's it take to get a job at Google? Court documents in an age discrimination collective action–Google just filed its summary judgment papers–give us some insight. The NLRB posts its proposed joint-employer changes. Plus: we've rounded up some of what Brett Kavanaugh said about labor-and-employment issues in his written responses and confirmation hearing. Scroll down for all the new client engagements, including in the EEOC's case against United Airlines and a new suit against Uber.

I'm Erin Mulvaney in Washington, covering labor and employment from the Swamp to Silicon Valley. Follow this weekly newsletter for the latest analysis and happenings. If you have a story idea, feedback or just want to say hi, I'm [email protected] and on Twitter @erinmulvaney.

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'Googleyness' Defined (And Tested)

How do you land a job at Google? You better have some “Googleyness.” An age-bias suit in San Jose federal court is spotlighting “Googleyness”—and testing whether Google's hiring process favors younger workers more than older ones.

Google's lawyers Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart recently filed summary judgment papers and are asking the trial judge to reconsider certification of the collective action. Kotchen & Low represent the 260 plaintiffs. I've got more on the dispute here.

The court papers are revealing, showing a glimpse at the hiring practices at the company. Google's defense team takes aim at the reliability of the plaintiffs' expert. Google contends there is no direct evidence of age-based discrimination. Expecting more from senior-position candidates, Google's lawyers said, is not age discrimination.

➤➤ The hiring process at Google involves “feedback from numerous Google engineers in a multi-stage, flexible process of consensus decision making.” Candidates who advance to an on-site interview meet with four or five engineers. Google deemed only 20.5 percent of onsite job candidates, of nearly 43,000, to be qualified for an employment offer, court records show. Google most values “work experience that's relevant to the job they're applying to,” according to court filings.

➤➤ Candidates are also assessed for their “Googleyness” or culture fit. “Googleyness,” according to the company's court papers, includes traits such as “cares about the team, puts the user first, effectively challenges the status quo, thrives in ambiguity and values feedback.” Google's internal candidate-tracking system—called gHire—makes note of an applicant's overall score, an assessment of coding abilities and any experience relevant to Google. The plaintiffs expert had access to gHire data for tens of thousands of onsite candidates as part of the collective action period.

➤➤ Google's lawyers claim phrases such as “rusty” and “old school” are not evidence of age bias. The company's lawyers contend the plaintiffs claims are based “on a handful of stray comments they cherry-picked from the gHire records.”

According to Google's lawyers: “The undisputed evidence is that Google decisionmakers do not know a candidate's birthdate or age, and that Google instructs interviewers and hiring committee members to evaluate candidates on their merits without regard for their age or membership in any other protected class.”

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Brett Kavanaugh's L&E Remarks: Recap

Brett Kavanaugh faced hours of questions last week about his thinking on Supreme Court precedent, abortion rights, presidential power and more. He also faced a battery of questions about civil rights and workplace protections. Democrats portrayed Kavanaugh as solidly pro-business. Republicans said Kavanaugh is open-minded and hasn't reflexively ruled against workers. Kavanaugh wouldn't open up about sexual orientation protections under Title VII, an issue being contested right now at the Supreme Court and other courts.

Here's a snapshot of some of what Kavanaugh had to say about labor and employment issues, in his own words, at his confirmation hearing and in written responses released Wednesday night.

➤➤ On workplace sexual harassment

Kavanaugh clerked for now-disgraced Ninth Circuit Judge Kozinski in the early 1990s. Kozinski, accused last year of sexual harassment, resigned. The accusations sparked a broader movement to address power imbalances in the federal courts, and Kavanaugh said he supports those efforts. He denied knowing about any claims against Kozinski, and said it was a “gut punch” when he learned about them.

“This is part of a much larger national problem of an abuse and harassment. And one of the things we've learned is we need better reporting mechanisms. Women particularly in the workplace need to know if they are the victim of harassment where to report it immediately, who to report to,” Kavanaugh told senators. “They need to know that they will be safe if they report it. They need to have a safe working environment, that they won't be retaliated against and they will being protected if they report it.”

➤➤ How sympathetic is Kavanaugh?

Asked about his ability to “stand in the shoes of somebody” else, Kavanaugh said he can balance any sympathy with the law. He noted one ruling as a D.C. Circuit judge where he agreed with a worker against a company in a dispute over racial harassment tied to a derogatory term.

“And it was a guy who said he had been called the 'N' word by a supervisor. And he's arguing pro se and the question is whether in the single instance of the 'N' word constitutes racial harassment under the civil rights laws,” Kavanaugh said. “And I wrote a separate opinion explaining, yes, a single instance of the 'N' word does constitute a racially hostile work environment.” He continued: “What I wanted to make clear by bringing this example up is, I understood his situation. I tried to understand what that would be like, and I decided the case based on the law..”

➤➤ Kavanaugh's SeaWorld dissent got a lot of attention.

Kavanaugh wrote in dissent in a now-famous case involving a SeaWorld trainer killed by a whale in Florida. He questioned the reach of an OSHA investigation “to regulate participants taking part in the normal activities of sports events of entertainment shows.”

“Lots of sports shows have serious dangers, whether it's football or the balance beam in gymnastics or high wire act at the circus or the lion tamer show,” Kavanaugh said at his confirmation hearing. He noted that the Labor Department does not regulate “whether baseball helmets had to have ear flaps or whether to prohibit the punt return or make the balance beam have nets.”

He continued: “The Labor Department in the oral arguments tried to distinguish the dangers of football from the dangers of the SeaWorld show. I did not, as I explained in the opinion, find that distinction persuasive.” Congress, Kavanaugh continued, “could make the decision to regulate the intrinsic qualities of sports and entertainment shows.” And there's always state tort laws “to ensure or help ensure safety in things like the SeaWorld show.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asked in writing: “How do state tort law and our civil justice system, in general, help promote workplace safety?”

Kavanaugh responded: “In general, state tort law and our civil justice system can provide an opportunity for people who are harmed by the actions or negligence of others to recover damages. The tort system thereby helps deter negligent actions and encourages or requires reasonable safety measures. Of course, state tort law is often augmented by state or federal regulation. It was the scope of federal regulation that was at issue in the SeaWorld case.”

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Who Got The Work

>> Seyfarth Shaw's Kathryn Palamountain, senior counsel in the firm's Houston office, filed a notice of appearance for United Airlines Inc. in Texas federal district court, where the company was sued last month by the EEOC for allegedly enabling sexual harassment. Seyfarth partners Gerald Pauling and Ada Dolph, both in Chicago, also filed their appearances for United Airlines. That case is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

>> Real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc. hired a team from Vedder Price P.C. to defend a proposed class action that claims overtime violations rooted in misclassification. A team from Outten & Golden and the Shavitz Law Grouprepresent plaintiff Ryan Seltz in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Read the complaint here.

>> Keller Lenkner & Robins Kaplan filed a class action against Uber Technologies on behalf of California Limo Company. The lawsuit claims the company is misclassifying its workers as independent contractors, in violation of California law. Read the complaint here.

>> Broker Christine Carona, who left UBS Group AG for Morgan Stanley last year, claims in a complaint at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination that her former boss tried to block her career path. She pulled the complaint and said she plans to file a lawsuit. Her attorney is Dan Rabinovitz, a shareholder at Murphy & King. Read more on Bloomberg.

>> McDonald's LLC hired Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Littler Mendelson in its National Labor Relations dispute with workers groups in the Fight for $15 that is seen as a test case for the controversial joint employer standard. [Bloomberg Law]

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Notable Moves

>> Steptoe & Johnson LLP announced Sara Pikofsky will join the firm's Employee Retirement Income Security Act Litigation practice as a partner. She previously worked as an ERISA litigator and trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor.

>> Schiff Hardin LLP hired Derek Barella as a partner in the firm's Labor and Employment Practice in Chicago. He left Winston & Strawn LLP, where he was a labor and employment partner.

>> Littler Mendelson acquired Reliance, the Belgian labor and employment law firm, and will add 20 lawyers. The expansion brings Littler's presence in Europe to six countries, while adding an outpost in Brussels, home of the European Union headquarters. Reliance was founded in 2009 by partners Edward Carlier and Koen De Bisschop, who were later joined by Anne-Valérie Michaux and Erwin Crabeels.

>> Fisher Phillips created an autonomous vehicles practice. Michael Greco, a specialist in trade secrets and restrictive covenants law, is leading the 23-lawyer practice from Denver for Fisher Phillips, which has more than 370 lawyers in 32 U.S. offices. Read more in The Daily Report.

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Around the Water Cooler…

>> “The CBS Board of Directors hired a top-notch team of women lawyers to investigate misconduct by ex-chairman and CEO Les Moonves (above)—but don't expect to see any of their work,” my colleague Jenna Greene writes. CBS hired Debevoise & Plimpton's Mary Jo White and Covington & Burling's Nancy Kestenbaum, co-chair of her firm's white-collar defense and investigations practice group.

>> When can your boss tap into personal electronic devices? A case in Manhattan federal court reveals the blurry lines. “We're going to see sticky issues like this where personal information and company information are intermingled,” said Fred Jennings, a lawyer at Tor Ekeland Law who specializes in digital privacy. “The question of how to disentangle them is an area where there's a whole lot of work to be done.” [Wall Street Journal] Read the complaint here.

>> The National Labor Relations Board is moving forward with a proposed rule to change the joint-employer standard. “Under the proposed rule, an employer may be found to be a joint-employer of another employer's employees only if it possesses and exercises substantial, direct and immediate control over the essential terms and conditions of employment and has done so in a manner that is not limited and routine. Indirect influence and contractual reservations of authority would no longer be sufficient to establish a joint-employer relationship.” According to the Federal Register notice: ”Today's notice specifically solicits empirical evidence from the public: information about real-world experiences, not desk-chair hypothesizing.”

>> Employment law in-House and around the world: a Q&A with Lesley Marlin of General Dynamics. “The labor and employment law landscape has changed quite a bit during my years of practice, especially recently.” [Corporate Counsel]

>> Who is a worker? That question just got more complicated in California thanks to a Ninth Circuit decision. [Big Law Business]

>> Whole Foods workers are attempting to unionize, fearing loss of benefits and power under its new owner Amazon.com. [Vox.com]