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The Employer Handbook BlogOh, no! Tell me a supervisor didn’t write THAT on an employee’s PIP.
If you haven’t done FMLA training for your supervisors, hopefully, this post will motivate you to get some on the calendar. Continue reading
Articles Posted in Discrimination and Unlawful Harassment
THIS action fell just short of possible discrimination and retaliation. (Whew!)
The plaintiff in this action has worked as a human resource specialist. She claimed that, beginning in 2019, her male supervisor made unwelcome sexual comments to her, and, when she reported those comments to his direct supervisor, they were ignored. So the plaintiff says she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (“EEO”) complaint. According to the plaintiff, nearly two years later, she faced a proposed letter of reprimand.
A proposed what now? Continue reading
Today is Equal Pay Day. And here’s why, for the 14th time, the reintroduced Paycheck Fairness Act won’t pass.
In recent years, many states have passed equal pay laws.
At the federal level, well… Continue reading
The time an employee rejected a $100 discrimination settlement and turned it into $495,000!
You practice long enough as an employment lawyer, and you accrue stories upon stories to share with others. But, this one I’m about to tell you tops most. Continue reading
ADA accommodation requests in Hawaii work the same way as in the other 49 states.
The plaintiff in the case I read last night worked in Hawaii as a customer service representative. She was a clinically obese woman with a long history of diabetes and hypertension, resulting in physical limitations related to neuropathy in her hands and feet. However, her job involved sitting at a desk, taking calls, and answering emails. So she had no trouble performing it for the first seven years of employment.
But, since I’m writing today about an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit, things did eventually go south, as you may have expected. Continue reading
“You have done nothing wrong. I am just following orders in building a new, younger team for the CEO.”
If you’re 67 years old, you work in human resources, and you happen to hear those words from the company’s U.S. president, it may be time to dust off the old resume.
Or contact the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Continue reading
PRO-TIP: If you want to arbitrate employment claims, have an arbitration agreement.
A client embroiled in an employment dispute with a former employee once asked me if we could force the employee into arbitration. So, I asked the client for a copy of the arbitration agreement that the individual had signed.
After an uncomfortably long pause, I went back to drafting the complaint to be filed in court. Continue reading
The EEOC isn’t the only federal agency safeguarding complaints about race bias at work
Last week, the National Labor Relations Board made headlines when it concluded that nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions in severance agreements that businesses give to rank-and-file employees are unlawful.
Yesterday, the Board made headlines again by releasing this Advice Memo in which it concluded that employees who engage in group discussions about issues of race that black employees face at work, including perceived implicit bias work, are protected from retaliation by employers. Continue reading
No job description? No problem. See why this employer had no duty to accommodate.
The Americans with Disabilities Act bars employers from firing someone because they have a disability. It also requires employers to provide workplace accommodations to otherwise “qualified” individuals with actual disabilities unless going so would create an undue hardship. Someone who is “qualified” can perform the job’s essential functions with or without an accommodation.
Put another way, if the employee can’t do the job with or without help, then the ADA doesn’t protect them – as one employee recently found out the hard way. Continue reading
Documentation and communication FTW! (Well, good enough.)
After completing a 90-day orientation program for newly licensed nurses, a woman was denied a full-time position as a Registered Nurse (RN) at a hospital and, instead, transferred into a lower-paying position at another facility that the same employer operated.
The woman — we’ll call her “Plaintiff” as we usually do here — alleged race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A plaintiff asserting a Title VII claim for race discrimination must present a convincing mosaic to the factfinder that race motivated the adverse employment action — in this case, the denial of the full-time RN position.