I was skeptical. Yesterday, at 10:17 AM, I received an emailed press release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The federal agency touted “adding a new section [to its existing COVID-19 Technical Guidance] to clarify under what circumstances COVID-19 may be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities…
I have a lot of respect for human resource professionals. It’s not easy being in HR. Or so I hear. (No one has ever confused me with someone who put the “human” in human resources. I can be more of a, shall we say, jerk.) I know the types of…
Image by Lynn Kurtz from Pixabay News of a New York-based online mortgage lender’s CEO terminating over 900 employees with no notice on a three-minute Zoom call has been dominating my Google Alerts recently. There’s this NBCnews.com report from Elisha Fieldstadt, Ali Gostanian, and Bianca Britton. Noah Kirsch also reported…
Almost everything I know about Australia comes from The Simpsons. For example, did you know that the water in flushed Australian toilets spins clockwise? (Except at the U.S. Embassy). Down under, they play a game called knifey-spoony. Bull frogs are chazwazzas. And, if you ask for coffee, they’ll serve you…
Image Credit: finger pointing by BomSymbols from the Noun Project While nerds like me were flooding LinkedIn with status updates about Sixth Circuit this and OSHA ETS that, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was hosting a secret “virtual dialogue” with the employer Illuminati about retaliation updating its COVID-19 Technical…
Image Credit: Wig by Daniela Baptista from the Noun Project In recent years, some states and municipalities have made it unlawful to discriminate based on an individual’s hairstyle because certain protected classes — usually Black women — receive unfair treatment based on inherent hair texture and protective hairstyles, like braids,…
form by Jason Tropp from the Noun Project Before I tell you which COVID-19 religious accommodation form you need to trash right away, don’t forget that today is the big, free live Zoom on the new OSHA vaccine-or-test mandate. Join me and my partners Amy Epstein Gluck, David Renner, Sid Steinberg, Gordon Berger…
Speech dialogue balloon by icon 54 from the Noun Project Yesterday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced a joint initiative to raise awareness about retaliation issues when workers exercise their protected labor rights. The EEOC…
Image by Dominic Wunderlich from Pixabay On Monday, a Texas federal court dealt with a nuanced issue relating to vaccine mandates. The case is not about the constitutionality or efficacy of vaccine mandates promulgated by the government or private entities. Instead, it focused on an airline’s accommodation policy for employees…
Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures.Net (Judge Gavel) Do you remember back in 2020, when the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employment discrimination based on LGBT status? But the court did leave one issue open, namely, the implications for…