Near the beginning of the pandemic, an employee in New Jersey reported to work but felt ill; specifically, he felt “cold, clammy, and weak.” After going home, the employer told him not to return until he tested for COVID-19. The next day, the plaintiff went to a free clinic where…
On June 16, 2017, an employer issued furlough notices to employees at its West Virginia facility. Over the following weeks, 65 or so employees submitted forms requesting to take medical leave based on claimed minor soft-tissue injuries sustained while off duty. The forms were similar in content; all were signed…
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “federal wage and hour investigators have seen corrupt employers try all kinds of scams to shortchange workers and to intimidate or retaliate against employees, but a northern California restaurant’s attempt to use an alleged priest to get employees to admit workplace ‘sins’ may…
Not this Boss. I’m talking about someone so high up in the company food chain that they serve as the organization’s proxy. Ordinarily, when an employee accuses a supervisor of creating a hostile work environment, as long as the company has not taken a tangible employment action against that employee,…
Roman Oleinik, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons It wasn’t quite instant karma. But two years after paying a worker’s final wages in a wheelbarrow full of oily pennies, an employer learned an expensive wage and hour lesson. A little over two years ago, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)…
In January, the Federal Trade Commission proposed eradicating most non-competition agreements. Last month, while the National Labor Relations Board doubled down on efforts to eliminate these restrictive covenants, the State of Minnesota voted to eliminate them starting in July. Now New York is poised to become the fifth state to…
On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) announced the introduction of the bipartisan Protecting Older Americans Act. The legislation would invalidate forced arbitration clauses that require employees to arbitrate claims…
A schoolteacher who got promoted to Assistant Head of School, only to have her position eliminated, felt that the school should have explored other alternatives. She believed this demonstrated a pretext for age discrimination. She was wrong. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits private employers from firing an…
Now, I know a lot of you reading this are out in Las Vegas at SHRM23 right now. And you probably work for companies that provide Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to employees that could use counseling or support. Most of you know that the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bans…
Near the beginning of the pandemic, an employee requested unpaid leave to care for her two-year-old son—a child with a history of respiratory illness experiencing symptoms resembling COVID-19. But she never ended up taking FMLA leave. Instead, she used PTO on Monday and Tuesday. The next day (Wednesday) was a…