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The Employer Handbook Blog

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Court destroys my “Ravishing Rick Rude” theory of same-sex harassment

Cut the music. A little over a year ago, I wrote here about a steel worker named Kerry Woods. Unfortunately for Mr. Woods, he was on the receiving end of a constant barrage of “raw homophobic epithets and lewd gestures” from his supervisor. Notwithstanding, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals…

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Court holds that anxiety from possibly getting fired is an ADA disability.

  Let me tell you about a teacher in South Dakota. In 2010, she received a letter communicating concerns about her performance. Subsequent evaluations of the teacher’s classes noted several deficiencies. So, the school placed the teacher on a performance improvement plan. It was right around this time that the…

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New PA bill would make the Commonwealth a right-to-work state

Before I get into the this new bill, let’s clear up a popular misconception: David Hasselhoff lives in my basement rent-free right-to-work means that an employee can be fired at any time for any non-discriminatory reason. No, dudes. That’s called at-will employment. Right-to-work laws give individual employees in a unionized workplace…

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Woman’s Kanye-inspired “take this job and shove it” video goes viral. Would YOU hire her?

Here’s the video: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_tdY0V4Zo Here’s the question: <a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7438559/”>Would you hire this employee?</a> Would you hire this woman? Tell me why or why not in the comments below. UPDATE: What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander. (h/t Mashable.com)

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The golden rule of accommodating employees under the ADA

Last week, I talked about reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the importance of having an open-minded, respectful conversation with a disabled employee who requests an accommodation to perform the essential functions of the job. Ultimately, as I’ve discussed before, the employer (and not the employee) may…

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Telling an employee to “focus on her health” is not disability discrimination

  Rather, it’s just being — oh what’s that word — ‘human.’ Like in this case, in which a supervisor with breast cancer was disciplined — yes, folks, you can reprimand an employee with an ADA “disability” or FMLA “serious health condition” — for allegedly calling other employees names such…

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Employee asks court to stop company from making her work Saturdays

Sounds like someone’s taken a page out of the Lionel Hutz playbook. Patrice Williams is a Seventh-Day Adventist. Seventh-Day Adventists believe that the Sabbath runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Because of her sincerely-held religious beliefs, Ms. Williams requested that her employer not require her to work during the…