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The Employer Handbook Blog
What are there legal risks of making a worker participate in an Employee Assistance Program?
Suppose that several employees complain that a coworker is creating a “hostile work environment” because they were afraid that she (the coworker) was going to report them (the employees) for engaging in unspecified misconduct in the workplace.
Can the employer respond by mandating an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) referral as a condition of the coworker’s continued employment?
There’s a new joint-employer rule. Wait, another one?!? Yes, this one involves employers and labor unions.
Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board swung the pendulum even further in favor of unions when it issued its Final Rule on joint employment. Continue reading
Complaints of discrimination can come in all shapes and sizes
A tenured professor in a university’s history department learns of “discrimination” and “marginalization” of Hispanic employees within the department. The university appoints him to an “Equity Committee” to address the problem. As part of his remediation efforts, the professor creates a “salary report” confirming instances of pay disparity among minority professors. He then circulates the report to colleagues and supervisors.
Will the professor have a viable retaliation claim if the university later takes against the professor because of the salary report?
In some places, federal antidiscrimination laws are much broader than you may realize
Last night, I read about a black female educator and school administrator who claimed that her employer agreed to pay for her to attend a training session but later reneged, instead offering to pay for her to attend in two years. So, she paid for it herself.
And then she sued her employer. Continue reading
I’ll give you a million reasons not to ask employees and applicants about family medical history
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) forbids discrimination against employees or applicants because of genetic information. Specifically, Title II of GINA prohibits using genetic information in making employment decisions, restricts employers from requesting, requiring, or purchasing genetic information, and strictly limits the disclosure of genetic information.
While GINA has been in effect for over ten years, it gets very little attention. Employees bring fewer discrimination charges under GINA than any other federal antidiscrimination statute that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission administers. But that doesn’t make it any less important or expensive when violations arise.
Check this out. Continue reading
On Instagram, an ER doctor said Israelis got “a taste of their own medicine.” CORRECTION: Former ER doctor.
A doctor whose job is to administer potentially life-saving medicine to patients, among them Jews, was reportedly fired after celebrating the massacre of Israelis by the Islamist terror group Hamas. Continue reading
It’s not often an employee has direct evidence of discrimination. But I found one that did.
A white man working as the general manager of a hotel claimed that his white supervisor engaged in racial discrimination when she terminated his employment.
Initially, I was skeptical. But not anymore. Continue reading
