Tag: leave

Legislation Introduced to Revise the FMLA

Apparently, Congress isn’t done expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA.) Just a few weeks ago, two different bills were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would expand the scope of the Act. FMLA Compliance Manual, including a quarterly compliance bulletin with updates on the FMLA Specifics of proposed legislation On April […]

Furloughs and Reduced-Hour Schedules As Alternatives to Layoffs

Layoffs have many downsides. Employee morale is guaranteed to drop. A company’s unemployment insurance premiums will rise, perhaps steeply. And if an employer provides severance packages and/or outplacement services, they could get very expensive. If layoffs are significant in number, a business may not be able to adequately compete once the economy turns around. And […]

Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership

A review by Employment law attorney Michael Maslanka reviews the book Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski. Review focuses on author’s lesson about using listening as a management tool. In Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Jaworski talks about how he made the difficult decision to leave the lucrative practice of law […]

NY corrections department must pay $1 million for discrimination in settlement with EEOC

The New York State Department of Correctional Services will pay almost $1 million to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The department was accused of providing inferior benefits to female employees on maternity leave. Both male and […]

Can Employers Apply USERRA Differently for Workers Who Volunteer for Service?

Q: Our Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) policy is administered differently for employees ordered into military service or leave and those who volunteer for military leave. The policy states that for ordered military leave shorter than 31 days, the company will pay the employee’s normal rate of pay. For voluntary military leaves, […]

Product Recall

LITIGATION VALUE: $45,000 Creed’s actions in setting up Debbie Brown to be fired for his mistake were not, in and of themselves, illegal. And, if Dunder Mifflin acted in good faith when it fired Debbie, then it probably didn’t do anything illegal either. At least not on the facts in this episode. Employees can be […]

Grief Counseling

LITIGATION VALUE: Nominal An employer can do many things to assist employees in coping with grief, but requiring them to attend a bird funeral in the parking lot is not one of them. Also, as a general rule, regional managers shouldn’t be soft shoulders for their subordinates. Certainly, they shouldn’t have a meeting asking employees […]