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The Employer Handbook Blog

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I know when you can start filing EEO-1 Component 1 Data. Here’s a hint: 🎃🍬🍫

Yes, soon after I start recycling old blog posts next month about the liability risks that employees and their poor costume choices present for employers, all private-sector employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees meeting specific criteria can start submitting demographic workforce data,…

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Another employer learns the hard way that it’s better to hire slow and fire fast

A company fired one of its employees just ten days after learning about his disability. Although the proximity between the two doesn’t confirm that the employee’s disability motivated the employer’s decision, some other vital factors led a federal appellate court to overrule a lower court’s decision in favor of the…

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This is not a drill. A new, federal overtime proposal will cost employers $1.2 billion.

For the first time in four years, the U.S. Department of Labor plans to increase the minimum salary level to be exempt from the Fair Labor Standard Act’s overtime requirements. What is the Department proposing? Under the current FLSA regulations, a covered employer must generally pay executive, administrative, or professional (EAP)…

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What is (and is not) considered retaliation?

A director for a major transit authority applied for two internal promotions. She didn’t get either. Feeling that she was more qualified than either successful candidate, the director reported discrimination internally and later filed a Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among other things, she alleged…

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The feds are trying to make unionizing your workplace easier than draining a two-foot putt.

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC that it claims in this press release will “effectuate employees’ right to bargain through representatives of their choosing and improve the fairness and integrity of Board-conducted elections.” That’s one way of putting it. Until…

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I may have located the blueprint showing when regular, in-person attendance is an ADA essential job function

Earlier this month, a federal appellate court had to decide whether a hospital employee could perform her job remotely or whether the job’s essential functions required her to come to work in person. Spoiler alert: The plaintiff lost the failure-to-accommodate claim she asserted under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But…

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An employer asked an employee for a doctor’s note with every intermittent FMLA absence. Here’s how it turned out…

All you Family Medical Leave Act savants know about the 30-day rule, right? Once an employer initially certifies an employee for FMLA leave, it cannot seek recertification more often than once every 30 days unless one of these exceptions applies. Hold that thought as I tell you about the facts…

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There’s a deadline to file discrimination charges with the EEOC. An employee learned that courts rarely excuse late filings.

Employees who want to bring federal anti-discrimination claims in court can’t just file the lawsuit. Instead, they must first file a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. There are time limits to filing with the EEOC. The EEOC website states: In general, you need to file…

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Does Title VII only cover ultimate employment decisions? Another federal appellate court doesn’t think so.

Imagine a business that gives its employees two days off each week. There’s nothing abnormal about that. However, the company uses a sex-based policy to determine which two days an employee can pick. Only men can select full weekends off—women cannot. Instead, female employees can pick either two weekdays off…