Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Employees with chemical sensitivity may be entitled to workplace accommodations, including permission to work from home, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ruled in Core v. Champaign County (July 30, 2012). Pamela Core, an employee at the Champaign County Department of Job and Family Services, had asthma and a severe chemical […]
A medical certification is a written document from a health care provider verifying that an employee’s leave is for a serious health condition. It is an objective tool that HR managers should use to determine whether to grant or deny leave requests under FMLA, the California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law, and the California Family Rights […]
Universally, HR managers wish that intermittent leave would just go away. Unfortunately, every HR department has to cope with its traps and technicalities. Today’s Advisor covers nine tricky aspects of intermittent and reduced schedule leave.” 1. Only for Medical Necessity There must be a medical need for intermittent leave or leave on a reduced leave […]
A supervisor’s apparent bias in the firing of her employee proved costly in a recent 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which upheld a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division awarding $413,000 in damages and liquidated damages in an FMLA retaliation claim based on cat’s-paw liability. […]
The off-week hours of rotational workers may count against FMLA leave, a federal judge reluctantly decided in a recent U.S. District Court ruling. The Oklahoma judge ruled for a trucking firm in an FMLA interference claim by a fired dispatcher who failed to return to work after he exhausted his 12 weeks of job-protected FMLA […]
When you must defend your decision to fire an individual based solely on his poor performance, no one likes the idea of having to scale a circumstantial Mount Everest in a court of law. But a cohesive paper trail of evidence is critical when you are asked to establish legal footing and justify your adverse […]
As an employer, you might think that there’s a clear difference between taking part in casual conversations with your employees versus receiving notice of an impending FMLA leave. After all, dropping hints in the lunchroom about ailing parents, sick kids or personal health issues doesn’t qualify these days as giving official leave notification, does it? […]
Woods is a shareholder in the Greenville, South Carolina office of law firm Ogletree Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, PC. His remarks came at BLR®’s annual National Employment Law Update. Employer’s Failure Allows FMLA Claim To Go Forward The Story: A newspaper receptionist, who was allegedly fired for violation of her employer’s attendance policy, had […]
A recent decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals highlights the importance of tracking employees’ hours. That court reversed a district court’s judgment against a New York high school English teacher who claims he was denied tenure in retaliation for taking seven days of leave following gallbladder surgery — FMLA leave for which […]
A multibillion-dollar corporation that hired a private investigator to combat excessive employee absenteeism and suspected FMLA abuse withstood an interference and retaliation claim by a fired factory worker in a case brought before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is Scruggs v. Carrier Corp., No. 11-3420 (Aug. 3, 2012). Daryl Scruggs, who […]