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The Employer Handbook BlogHe got fired after threatening to complain to HR. Could that be retaliation?
The plaintiff in this federal court decision I read last night didn’t exactly come off as a model employee. Continue reading
She said the quiet part loud and the loud part, well, not at all.
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not protect employee use of illegal drugs. It does not prevent employers from testing applicants or employees for current illegal drug use or making employment decisions based on verifiable results. However, the ADA would protect an employee with a disability who fails a drug test if the employer bases its termination decision on the underlying disability rather than the test result.
But here’s the thing. Continue reading
A day late and an age discrimination claim short
A 30-plus-year employee found out the hard way that missing a deadline — by just 24 hours — to arbitrate her claim against her former employer under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is enough to lose it forever when her brief delay violates the plain terms of an arbitration agreement.
How do you track FMLA when an employee takes leave during the week of Memorial Day?
If you’ve got an HR-compliance sweet tooth, here is your FMLA nerd candy. Continue reading
The Labor Board’s top attorney wants to void non-competes that violate labor law. Hot take: meh.
Yesterday, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo claiming that the “proffer, maintenance, and enforcement non-compete provisions in employment contracts and severance agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act except in limited circumstances.”
Other labor and employment lawyers may forebode the end for most non-competes.
Me? I ain’t scared. Continue reading
At work, do we have to accommodate employees with religions we’ve never heard of?
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from discriminating against employees based on religion. As the EEOC points out, “the law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.”
While the law may not protect folks who pray to flying spaghetti monsters, Title VII can apply to others who are not members of conventional religious groups. As the EEOC notes, “just because an individual’s religious practices may deviate from commonly-followed tenets of the religion, the employer should not automatically assume that his or her religious observance is not sincere.” Continue reading
Was she requesting Family and Medical Leave Act leave or pitching a television show?!?
This will all make sense in a minute if you keep reading. Continue reading
Is it sexual harassment to IMPLY that certain job benefits will require sexual favors?
Have you ever heard of quid pro quo sexual harassment? Continue reading
Would you stop emailing and texting? Just pick up the damn phone for once instead!
If, like me, you deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, you’ve yelled the title of this blog post at others.
(And if you don’t deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, dude, WTH are you doing here?) Continue reading
Here’s how the feds will enforce pump at work protections for nursing workers
For over a decade, federal law has required most employers to provide a nursing mother with reasonable break time to express breast milk after the birth of her child for up to one year after childbirth. Last December, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act became law. The PUMP Act provides additional workplace protections for employees who need to express breast milk, creating protections for an estimated nine million more employees.
Last week, the Wage and Hour Division published, Enforcement of Protections for Employees to Pump Breast Milk at Work, to help Department of Labor field staff enforce the law. This blog post is your movie trailer version of this latest publication.