The Employer Handbook Blog

6 EEOC priorities over the next 4 years and the impact on your business

December 21, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

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Thus far, you’ve managed to keep your equal-employment-opportunity nose clean. Good for you. In fact, with the economy the way it is, combined with the dwindling resources available to our federal agencies — including the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — your odds of facing a federal investigation based on a complaint of discrimination or harassment are fairly slim.

But…

On Tuesday, the EEOC announced its Strategic Enforcement Plan. And within that plan, you’ll find six areas of EEOC focus over the next four years:

Swine flu as an ADA disability? What would Ozzy and Sharon say?

December 20, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

“Oy, Sharon! Will you help me out here?”

“Come on, Ozzy! Yellow in the front, brown in —.”

“Bloody hell, Sharon! I’m trying to comprehend this federal court decision from the District of Minnesota.”

Pay it forward: HR and Employment-law style

December 19, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

Mark Toth and ManpowerGroups’s The Employment Blawg is hosting this month’s Employment Law Blog Carnival: Special Holiday Edition, a collection of 18 blog posts from some of the best employment lawyers on the interwebz. Got questions? They have answers. So be sure to check that out. That’s my gift (regifted, I suppose) to you.

Now the pay-it-forward part.

Daniel Schwartz at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog has a series of posts (here, here, and here) on the Newtown shooting tragedy. If any of my readers would like to help out with the relief efforts in CT, Dan has several links in his most recent Newtown post.

Does the law require transfers for employees seeking medical treatment?

December 18, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

You have an employee who hurts herself on the job and becomes disabled. Although she recovers to the point where she can perform the essential functions of her position without the need for accommodation, she requests a transfer to another one of your facilities so that she has better access to ongoing medical treatment.

Does the law require you to grant that transfer?

In this recent case (Sanchez v. Vilsack), the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination in federal employment, and courts interpret like the Americans with Disabilities Act, may require this.

When can an employer require an exempt employee to take unpaid leave?

December 17, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

Like most employers, you likely have a workforce comprised of both non-exempt and exempt employees. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a workweek must be paid OT. Employers don’t need to pay OT to exempt employees.

Let’s assume that, each year, you provide your workforce with a bank of paid time off. Let’s further assume that you implement a policy that mandates that any additional leave be taken in unpaid full-day increments, event if the employee only needs a few hours off.

Is that policy legal? Or does it violate the FLSA? The answer follows after the jump.

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How Employer Words and Actions Can Make FMLA Apply, Even When It Doesn’t

December 14, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

Today we have a guest blogger at The Employer Handbook. It’s one of my fave employment lawyers from Twitter, Chuck Lawson.

Chuck is a member of the Labor and Employment group at Grant Konvalinka & Harrison, P.C., where he specializes in all phases of the employer-employee relationship, including wage and hour, FMLA, ADA, unemployment compensation, and discrimination/harassment law.

After the jump, Chuck is going to school you on some FMLA pitfalls that can trip up even the best employers — and how to avoid them (the pitfalls, that is).

(Want to guest blog at The Employer Handbook? Holla at ya boy).

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If your employee did THIS on Facebook, what would you do?

December 13, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

I did one of these posts a few weeks ago, where I wrote about employees getting sacked for a Facebook post and then offered you — the employment lawyers and HR pros — the opportunity to second-guess the termination decision.

Giving y’all the chance to weigh in nearly crashed my servers. So, let’s try it again with a new set of facts. But, be easy on my hardware.

Rhonda Lee is a meteorologist for KTBS-TV. Oh, did I say “is“? I meant “was“. She was fired based on two exchanges that occurred on the station’s Facebook page:

New “Top Jobs for 2013” list will make many of my readers VERY happy

December 12, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

Good news for HR professionals!

That, according to this recent poll from CareerBuilder and EMSI, ranking the best jobs for 2013 requiring a bachelor’s degree.

Coming in at #5 was “Human Resources, Training and Labor Relations Specialists.” The numbers reflect that the profession has added 22,773 jobs since 2010, which represents 5% growth. Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, believes that the study results indicate that “[w]here the U.S. will produce the most jobs in 2013 is likely to follow growth patterns of the last few years.”

Fact or Fiction: Breaks/lunch taken at work may qualify for FMLA

December 11, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post.”

The Family and Medical Leave Act permits employees to take leave on an intermittent basis or to work a reduced schedule under certain circumstances, such as caring for a parent with a serious health condition. Intermittent leave can be days, hours, or even minutes off of work. Indeed, when an employee takes FMLA leave on an intermittent or reduced leave schedule basis, the employer must account for the leave using an increment no greater than the shortest period of time that the employer uses to account for use of other forms of leave provided that it is not greater than one hour and provided further that an employee’s FMLA leave entitlement may not be reduced by more than the amount of leave actually taken.

When employees use minutes of intermittent FMLA, it’s generally in the form of early dismissals or late arrivals to work. But what about FMLA leave during breaks and lunches, when the employee never actually leaves the office? Can that time be used for intermittent FMLA leave?

HO HO NO! Facebook comments get Santa Claus fired…twice!

December 10, 2012 | by Eric B. Meyer

With the National Hockey League season in jeopardy, I imagine that Canadians are a fairly ornery bunch these days.

Even further north, hockey fans too are in turmoil. Reports from the North Pole have Mrs. Claus moping around. Morale amongst Santa’s helpers is at an all-time low, causing toy production to drop 20%. And the elf of the shelf just flipped me the bird.

But it appears that no one is taking it harder than jolly old Saint Nick.