Readers: A brony is a male fan of the children’s television show My Little Pony. (This is the part where you let everything that you’ve read thus far sink in, as you watch this clip, close your office door, and laugh hysterically. Go ahead. It’s ok). According to Gawker, the…
The Employer Handbook Blog
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…
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…
Fan gets fired for playing hooky to maintain his Yankee Stadium attendance streak
You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What kind of person cares that much about going to a baseball game that he would risk losing his job over it?” The guy who hasn’t missed a Yankees home game for 38 years. According to this CBS2 New York Report, Joseph Neubauer, who hadn’t…
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…
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)
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…
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…
6 keys to having your age discrimination release hold up in court
You’re about to have a reduction in force and you’re going to offer a severance package to those effected: one week of salary for every year of service in exchange of a full release of all claims. If one or more employees affected by the reduction in force is 40…
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…