Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay What a difference a few years make. Two years, Richard Griffin, the former General Counsel of the National Labor Relation Board (“NLRB“), stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued in Epic Systems v. Lewis that arbitration agreements requiring employees to forego the ability…
Image by tigerlily713 from Pixabay In 2012, the EEOC issued its Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII. The purpose of the Guidance was to help eliminate barriers in recruitment and hiring to ensure that companies running these background checks weren’t…
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor issued this opinion letter in which the DOL concluded that the FMLA covers a parent’s attendance at his/her child’s individualized education program (IEP) at school. Ultimately, this amounts to caring for a family member with a serious health…
Image Credit: Pixabay.com (https://www.needpix.com/photo/180714/muscle-muscular-athlete-fitness-body-bodybuilder-workout-bodybuilding-macho) If you’re old enough, maybe you remember this Miller Lite commercial from the 1970s where Steve “The Miz” Mizerak was just showing off at a billiards table, working up a thirst for his adult beverage of choice: Miller Lite. Last week, the State of New Jersey…
By Nut-hardware.jpg: Muke derivative work: Xoristzatziki (talk) – Nut-hardware.jpg, Public Domain, Link I can tell you this. It takes more than a few posts from a couple of ‘Wingnuts.’ Some mean-spirited Facebook posts. The plaintiff, in this case, worked for a unionized airline. The plaintiff ran to become the union president.…
Image by Social Butterfly from Pixabay When can you ask an employee if s/he has a problem with alcohol? The answer is almost never. But, one company recently dodged a major bullet after asking an employee whether he had a drinking problem and questions about his drinking in general. Using…
Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay I don’t envy you. If I were an HR department of one, I’d crash and burn. To wit, no one has ever accused me of putting the ‘human’ into human resources. I don’t know how you juggle so many balls at once. But, I imagine…
Remember those “what’s wrong with this picture” games that we played as children? Something like this. Last night, I found the employment law equivalent from this recent Sixth Circuit opinion. [tl;dr: A colossal series of HR-compliance gaffes leads to a whopper of a jury verdict against the employer, which includes…
Public Domain, Link I conduct Fair Labor Standards Act (wage-and-hour) audits for clients. Among other things, I help them determine whether they are paying at least the minimum wage to all employees. But, more importantly, I confirm which employees are entitled to overtime (time-and-a-half for working more than 40 hours…
Image Credit: Pixabay.com This definitely caught me flat-footed. An implied duty to accommodate? I think not. Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana law specifically states that no employer must “make any accommodation of the use of medical marijuana on the property or premises of any place of employment.” But the law is silent…