Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
If equal pay issues aren’t visible on your radar screen, they should be. That’s because both the government and disgruntled employees continue to target employers who violate equal pay laws. Congress is actively debating a bill that would strengthen federal equal pay rules (see the Special Supplement on pending legislation in this month’s Bulletin). And […]
Many human resource managers worry about age bias suits whenever there’s a reorganization and older workers who don’t fit in the new company structure are terminated. But if you can show that your motives are business-related and you handle the situation properly, you’ll go a long way toward avoiding liability. Here’s a look at one […]
Employers are frequently reminded of their legal obligation to promptly and thoroughly investigate all sexual harassment complaints and, as a result, often call in lawyers or specially trained consultants to conduct a complete and objective inquiry. But a controversial new government opinion suggests that using outside investigators could result in your inadvertently breaking a federal […]
Employers who provide on-site meals to certain workers have been given a break by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Boyd Gaming Corp., which owns casinos in Nevada, offered workers free meals in an on-site cafeteria because it required them for security reasons to remain on the premises for their entire shift. But when […]
A number of cases in recent years have raised the thorny issue of whether the Americans With Disabilities Act protects workers whose disabilities don’t necessarily affect them at work because they take medication or use corrective devices. Now, in a trio of important new decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the Equal Employment Opportunity […]
A Southern California jury has ordered an employer to pay $2,331,319 to two waitresses who said they were sexually harassed by other employees and then retaliated against after they complained. Rebecca Barklage and Malissa McCard worked at Birraporetti’s Restaurant in Costa Mesa. They claimed that the kitchen staff and several busboys repeatedly harassed them. One […]
Sears Roebuck & Co. has agreed to pay a $325,000 fine to settle allegations that it violated federal child labor laws. Investigators allegedly found violations involving a total of 227 minors at over 60% of the Sears stores that were investigated. The violations included allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to operate power-driven equipment and letting teens […]
An employee who claimed she was fired because her newborn daughter had a disability has been given the green light to sue her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Karen Abdel-Khalek, who worked for Tenenbaum and Associates, Inc., gave birth to a baby with serious health problem. Several months later, while Abdel-Khalek was on […]
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed a new tool that allows you to easily search existing wage and salary surveys for specific occupations in different geographic areas. The program is available free on CD-ROM, and the government hopes to put it on the Internet sometime within the next year. To receive a copy, […]
Some employers routinely protest claims for unemployment benefits without much consideration of the facts of each case. But one company recently discovered that an automatic challenge can boomerang into a costly lawsuit. We’ll look at what happened and offer some practical legal tips on how to approach unemployment insurance claims.