Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Although the disability provisions of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) were modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the two laws have some key differences—and the California rules provide greater protection for disabled employees. We’ll tell you about a new ruling from a federal court in San Francisco that focuses on […]
A new Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal ruling highlights how critical it is for employers to take all necessary steps to prevent racial harassment in the workplace and to stop such misconduct when it occurs. We’ll recount what happened and suggest how you can set up an effective antiharassment program.
Many small-business owners both administer and participate in pension plans covered by the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act (ERISA). But the courts have been split as to whether business owners qualify as participants under ERISA and are entitled to the same legal protections as employees, including protection from creditors in the event of bankruptcy. […]
April Chapman sued Sonoma County, claiming she was sexually harassed by her supervisor, Brian Enos. A trial court found that the county wasn’t automatically liable for Enos’s conduct because he didn’t qualify as a supervisor under California’s sexual harassment law. Now a California appeal court has reversed that ruling. To be considered a supervisor, an […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding a San Francisco ordinance requiring contractors to provide domestic partner benefits. The case involved S.D. Myers Inc., an Ohio company that was denied a city contract because it refused to provide its employees with domestic partner benefits. The company unsuccessfully charged that […]
New legislation, SB 1841, has been introduced in Sacramento to require employers to notify employees in writing or electronically before monitoring the workplace electronically—by such means as computer, phone, wire, radio, or camera. The detailed notice would have to be issued when electronic monitoring is implemented and annually thereafter. Violations would carry a steep penalty […]
If you’re like many employers, you continually make changes in the workplace to boost employee health and safety. But it can be difficult to measure whether the changes are effective or whether other fixes are needed. Now, the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has made a new manual and a companion webpage […]
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), truck drivers and nursing aides were the two occupations in private industry with the highest rate of injuries and illnesses requiring at least one day away from work in 2002. The BLS reports that there were 1.4 million total workplace injuries entailing at […]
With Gov. Schwarzenegger poised to deliver enough voter signatures to place workers’ compensation reform on the November ballot, the Legislature reached a compromise with the governor and passed its own workers’ comp reform legislation—which the governor has now signed into law. The measure (SB 899) is expected to save employers several billion dollars a year […]
On April 20, the U.S. Department of Labor released the final and long-awaited changes to the white-collar overtime exemption rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The final version, which takes effect in late July 2004, contains some big changes from the earlier proposed version, including expanding the pool of employees eligible to receive […]