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An employee who claims she was discriminatorily deprived of a promotion must file the claim within a limited period after the discriminatory conduct occurred. Some courts say the claim arises when the employer decides not to provide the promotion. Other courts say it’s when the employer actually fills the job. Which is correct? Neither, said […]
Workplace violence has been a problem in California and across the nation for decades, and it appears to be getting worse. Some governmental estimates have identified up to 36 mass killings in California workplaces in the last decade, including five since the start of 2021. According to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study, […]
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden fired a key figure at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a move that’s being called a clear signal the agency is moving from a probusiness to a prounion stance.
After nine movies in 16 years, the Fast and Furious franchise still seems to be alive and well. The parties to the following action agreed that any dispute regarding the movies, including sequels and remakes, would be resolved in arbitration. But does that agreement cover the recent movie starring longtime protagonists Hobbs and Shaw, which […]
For years, Google has been playing with fire by encouraging employees to post almost anything on its internal message boards. The company, known as the portal for any inquiry imaginable, brought its open search philosophy in-house, encouraging robust employee discussion on almost any topic, without fear of retaliation.
We are often asked whether being an “at-will” employer means a company can terminate somebody for a discriminatory reason—for example, because she is a woman or a person of color. The answer is no. The at-will-employment doctrine does not protect employers from the consequences of discriminatory job actions. But the 2nd District Court of Appeal […]
If I asked whether a manager can demand solid job performance from an employee who reported or witnessed alleged acts of harassment, we would all say yes. If I asked whether a manager could threaten or retaliate against that employee, we’d all reply with an emphatic no. We’ve all been presented with scenarios that lead […]
The U.S. Supreme Court was widely expected to decide between religious rights and LGBTQ rights when it issued its ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the case involving a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. But—in the tradition of the Supreme Court—the justices ducked the main […]
I am reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, in which Yuval Noah Harari posits, among other things, that the “Agricultural Revolution,” which created the first stable, large civilized communities, was a disaster, with the successful farmer working much longer and harder than her nomadic hunter-gatherer tribal ancestors, a day spent running through woods replaced by plowing, […]
What if a manager accused of unlawful discrimination based on employees’ religion asserts that the complaint itself is an act of harassment? You owe duties all around, and you may not be able to perform one duty without risking a violation of the other. See how one employer successfully avoided that minefield.