For the second year in a row, it was retaliation. Of the nearly 100,000 Charges of Discrimination that employees filed with the EEOC in 2011, retaliation claims accounted for just over 37% of them. Race claims were just behind at 35.4%. Sex was third at 28.5%.
A complete breakdown of 2011 EEOC charge statistics can be found here.
Today we have a guest blogger at The Employer Handbook. It’s Janette Levey Frisch. Janette is In-House Counsel at Joule, Inc. where she provides comprehensive legal representation and support to a staffing company with five subsidiaries throughout the East Coast. You can connect with Janette on Twitter here and on LinkedIn here.
Janette’s post on criminal background checks, which includes some best practices for employers, follows after the jump…
(Want to guest blog at The Employer Handbook? Email me.)
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According to FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org, the lawsuit that keeps those lawyer jokes flowing is…
Convict sues couple he kidnapped for not helping him evade police. A man who kidnapped a couple at knifepoint while he was running from the police is now suing the victims, claiming that they promised to hide him in exchange for an unspecified amount of money. The plaintiff, currently in jail, is seeking $235,000 for the alleged “breach of contract.”
And from the ridiculous to the sublime just-about-as ridiculous…
Yesterday, in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment bar employment-discrimination lawsuits by ministers against their churches. More on this decision and some helpful reminders for private-sector employers after the jump…
Starting this year, employees who receive severance pay in excess of 40% of the average annual wage in Pennsylvania will have their unemployment compensation benefits offset. Currently, that 40% number is $17,853.00.
As Jonathan Segal, Legislative Director for PA State Council of SHRM, notes here, employers should be very careful not to represent anything in a severance agreement that an employee could reasonably construe as suggesting that this change in the law will not apply. He adds here that employers should also consider beefing up their severance-agreement-release language to confirm that the release is effective even if severance is offset or reduced under PA law.
You can read more on the change in the law here.
To prove disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a plaintiff, at a minimum, must prove that:
- she is disabled;
- she is otherwise qualified to perform the job requirements, with or without reasonable accommodation; and
- she was discharged (or otherwise suffered an adverse employment action) solely on account of her disability
After the jump, I have a recent federal court decision from Michigan which addresses the second prong above; specifically, whether and when working a minimum number of hours a week is an essential job function, such that if a disabled employee can’t work those hours, she can be fired — legally.
As the year draws to a close, let’s take a look back at the most popular posts at The Employer Handbook in 2011, based on number of hits:
5. Social media and the workplace. School teacher Natalie Munroe made several appearances on the blog this year. Remember her? She was the blogging school teacher who wrote that her students were “utterly loathsome in all imaginable ways.” Although, Ms. Munroe eventually returned to work, her experience is a sound reminder to always think twice before hitting “send.” You can read the fifth-most-popular post, “Yes, you CAN discipline employees who abuse social media” here.
4. I’m a poet and I don’t even know it. I’m not sure what inspired the fourth-most-popular post. It must have been a slow news day. How else do I come up with the idea to Haiku — verbing a noun, sorry — about recent employment-law decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court?
Last week, a federal appellate court (here) allowed a white assistant manager to pursue claims of reverse race discrimination against a bank because the reasons that the bank offered to the court for firing the plaintiff did not jibe with the documentation in its own file. Oh, wait a minute, there was zero documentation in the file.
I smell some trouble for the employer and some good lessons for my business readers, after the jump, of course…
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Oh, Meyer, where are you going with this one?
Well, it’s my chance to play a little GnR after the jump while reminding my awesome employer readers about what it takes for an employee to actually prove a claim of age discrimination.
(Hint: It’s not easy)…
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I have no idea. I was hoping that one of you could help me out.
Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be the expert here. Ok. Fine. I’ll play some music and dish the deets — hint, it has something to do with the picture — after the jump…
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