Image by Annalise Batista from Pixabay Yesterday morning, I received a press release from the U.S. Department of Labor. Five opinion letters The U.S. Department of Labor announced five new opinion letters that address compliance issues related to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): FLSA2020-6: Addresses whether salespeople who travel…
oImage by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay TL;DR – Damn skippy, you can. Do you guys read “Ask a Manager” by Allison Green? It’s a fantastic HR blog where readers submit questions — some real zany ones — to Allison for her input. Yesterday, I noticed that a reader had asked for…
Jericho / CC BY About a week or so ago, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reminded employers that federal anti-discrimination law does not require that businesses accommodate older workers due to their age if, for example, they need help returning to work. I wrote about that here. But, here’s…
Image by Mr Salih from Pixabay Yesterday’s post about employees wearing Black Lives Matter apparel at work was a bit of a lightning rod. While all of the comments I received were respectful — thank you! — some questioned whether allowing employees to wear BLM face masks, pins, and insignia…
The All-Nite Images from NY, NY, USA / CC BY-SA If you’ve read the news recently, you may have seen stories like this one and this one about large businesses that had policies against employees wearing pro-BLM clothes and apparel. In those two examples, each of the companies has since changed…
Image by Pro File from Pixabay Last week, OSHA issued some guidance on wearing masks in the workplace. It was kinda vague and underwhelming. Yesterday, OSHA came back with additional guidance on returning to work. Is it any better than OSHA’s last offering? Let’s find out. We begin with a…
free images I’ve got something to tell you. I’m coming clean. Are you ready? Here it is. I don’t know squat about antibody testing for COVID-19. And guess what? You don’t either. Look, I’ve met plenty of people who think that they know about antibody testing for COVID-19: friends, colleagues,…
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay On Monday, Representatives Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Senator Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) introduced the COVID-19 Whistleblower Protection Act. It is part of a larger piece of legislation called the “Coronavirus Oversight and Recovery Ethics Act of 2020” or the “CORE Act.”…
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash As you’ve no doubt heard by now, yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is the federal workplace law…
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay If you haven’t had this conversation yet with one of your current or furloughed employees, you inevitably will. So, what do you say? Well, I can’t begin to give you the rules for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. But, I can…