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The Employer Handbook Blog
Even in one of the most employee-friendly states, COVID-19 isn’t necessarily a disability
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 he obtained a COVID-19 test. While waiting for the results, the employee reported to his employer that he felt better, and offered to return to work, maintaining social distance from others. The employer fired him instead.
Is this disability discrimination? Continue reading
Have you ever had 65 employees seek FMLA at the same time with the same doctor’s notes?
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 by one of two chiropractors, and all called for a medical leave of eight weeks or more.
What would you do in that situation? Continue reading
Holy hell! The Department of Labor apparently caught an employer using a fake priest to get employees to confess workplace sins.
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 be among the most shameless.”
Me? I haven’t seen anything this sacrilegious since Homer ate a god waffle that Marge dislodged from the Simpsons’ ceiling. Continue reading
If the boss is creating a hostile work environment, no amount of fix-it may save you in the lawsuit
Not this Boss. I’m talking about someone so high up in the company food chain that they serve as the organization’s proxy. Continue reading
A company paid an employee’s final paycheck in about 91,500 oily pennies. Now, it owes 4,473,418 more.
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.
New York is inching closer to banning non-competes
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 ban noncompetes. Continue reading
Your employees’ arbitration agreements may look a lot different soon (all crumpled up in a trash can)
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 of age discrimination, whether for disparate treatment, disparate impact, harassment, and retaliation. Continue reading
That time a federal appellate court schooled a teacher on at-will employment
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. Continue reading
Does telling an employee to seek anger management mean that you regard them as having an ADA disability?
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 discrimination against employees who have actual disabilities and those that employers perceive as having a disability, also prohibits employers from inquiring about the nature or severity of a disability unless the inquiry is shown to be “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”
But have you ever wondered whether recommending an EAP to an employee invokes the ADA?