Florida Institute of Technology
BUS 5456 3N Employment Law/Labor Law 
Fall 2025
Thursdays – 5:00 - 8:00 PM (Via Zoom)
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control
Instructor: Dr. R. Austin Arenz III DM, MPA, MPH, MBAHC, aPHR, TQM(P), LSSBB, MSM/MHR, RT
(256) 527-8417
rarenz@fit.edu

 


Course Description: The objective of this course is to familiarize the student with the development of Laws, practices and agencies regarding the U.S. workforce. This course will introduce a broad range of legal precedents that managers must consider when dealing with and subordinates in modern organizations. It will focus on the historical progression of rights and responsibilities in the workplace.
The course will explore best management practices, conflict resolution and human resource law. A great deal of attention will be paid to union-based labor practices and their slow decline. Extensive introduction of course terms and lectures will be though out the term.

Course Objective: Upon completion of this course, the student will have a working knowledge of and an
increased capacity for:
1) Describing and discussing the basic concepts of labor law.
2) Contributions made by layers of laws and agencies over the past 150 years
3) Recognizing legal hazards endemic to employee relations
4) Analyzing the impact of these laws on the economic growth of the U.S.

TEXT
The SHRM Essential Guide to Employment Law  2nd Edition (Optional)

ISBN13: 978-1-58644-516-4


Academic Honesty:
Academic honesty is highly valued in all of Florida Tech's courses. The student must always submit work
that represents original words or ideas. If any words or ideas are used that do not represent those original words or ideas, the student must cite all relevant sources and provide a clear definition of the extent to which such sources were used.

Words or ideas that require citation include, but are not limited to all hard copy or electronic publications, whether copyrighted or not, and all verbal or visual communication when the content of such communication clearly originates from an identifiable source. At Florida Tech, all submissions to any public meeting, bulletin board or private mailbox fall within the scope of words and ideas that
require citations if used by someone other than the original author.

Academic dishonesty could involve:
· Having a tutor or friend complete a portion of the student's assignments,
· Having a reviewer make extensive revisions to an assignment,
· Copying work submitted by another student to another public class meeting,
· Using information from online information services without proper citation.
Any of these practices could result in charges of academic dishonesty.
For more information, see Florida Tech’s policy on academic dishonesty, cheating and plagiarism.

Confidentiality
We are all bound by confidentiality in this class. Possibly, students may want to discuss their company
and its policies and procedures as applied to the class material. Perhaps the student will want to provide
a paper on a company confidential project. In order to assure that we can have a free and open
discussion, it is expected that each student will respect the confidentiality of any materials that
classmates are willing to share.

 

Employment Law


Fall 2025 Class Schedule

1) August 21- Introduction
Chapters 1&2
Project Description

2) August 28th
Team Assignment
Chapter 3 & 4 &Quiz 1

3) September 4th Holiday


4) September 11th
Team Meeting


5) September 18th

Chapters 5, 6 & 7

 

 6) September 25th
Chapters 8,9 & 10

 

7) October 2nd 25th
Midterm

8) October 9th
Chapters 11, 12 and 13


9) October 16th
Team Meeting


10) October 24th
Chapters 14 & 15


11) October 31
No Class

 

12) November 6th

Chapters 16 & 17

13) November 13th

Holiday/Team Meeting

 

14) November 20th

Chapters 18, 19 & 20

 

15) November 28th

Happy Thanksgiving

 

16) December 4th

Final Exam

Project Turn-In

 

 

Course Requirements
Quiz- 10
Midterm- 20
Final Exam- 40
Paper/Presentation- 30
------------------------------------
Total 100


Class Attendance. Class attendance provides an opportunity for you to get involved in discussions and provide you opinions on various topics. I understand that periodically things come up and you cannot make it to class or you are ill and have to stay home however please do try to make it to class.
Group Project Paper. One of the requirements of the class is to apply the various concepts and theories to an organization. The document entitled Group Project provides details on how the final group project should be organized and what type of information it should contain. In addition, I will go over this assignment in class and will also provide you with some time in class to discuss the projects with
your group members.
Note, I will be asking the groups to provide periodic progress reports on the group project. This is being done to prevent the "last minute rush" of doing everything a few nights before the project is due.
Group Project Presentation. Groups will submit a voiced over presentation via email. This Power Point presentation should be about 15 minutes and include topics such as examples ofhow/where information was obtained and how it applies to the organizational department you selected.
Note that I will not be providing specific direction to you for your projects - I am relying on you to use your imagination and come up with unique descriptions that meet the criteria for the different sectionsof the project identified in the Group Project document.
Hopefully you will find the course to be challenging yet interesting! Please feel free to use your creativity on the final project - we cannot learn if we only do as we are told. Use your imagination in trying to apply the various concepts and theories to a department in your organization.