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  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
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Louis DiLorenzo

What if worker objects to her name on holiday card?

02/19/2009

Q. An employee objected to us putting her name (just her first name!) on our company’s “Holiday Greetings from Our Staff” card. She said she doesn’t celebrate holidays for religious reasons and using her name without permission was illegal. The boss said she should “get over it.” Did we set ourselves up for a lawsuit?

Can we be liable for revoking a job offer?

02/19/2009

Q. We recently made a job offer to someone, rescinded the offer and then hired another applicant two months later. Is there anything illegal about that?

The safest way to handle calls for references and recommendations

02/17/2009

As the economy shrinks, unemployment is growing in New York and throughout the country. If your organization plans to lay off workers or already has, brace yourself. Lots of former employees are going to list you and your managers as references when they seek new jobs. That means it’s time to make sure you have policies in place on how to handle reference-check calls.

Can we set different sick policies for different offices?

01/16/2009

Q. We have two offices in two different states. In one office, we have a sick leave policy in place because we have exempt employees, and the FLSA requires us to have the policy if we want to dock exempt employees for sick time after they exhaust their sick days. All employees at the second office are hourly, and they rarely call in sick. Can we have a policy at one location and not at another?

Driving on company business: Who’s liable?

01/16/2009

Q. Say an employee driving his own car on company business to make a bank deposit gets into an accident and is slightly injured. Is it his responsibility to go to his own doctor to seek immediate treatment and then to the workers’ comp doctors? And who covers the damage to the car?

Are we required to send job-offer letters?

01/16/2009

Q. Are we required to give applicants official offer letters? What does a letter have to spell out?

Are employees obligated to keep wages and salaries confidential?

01/12/2009

Q. Can an employer prohibit employees from sharing confidential wage information with each other, such as rates of pay or the amount of wage increases?

Can we deduct personal leave for exempt worker’s partial-day absence?

01/09/2009

Q. Some of our supervisors make their exempt employees take personal or sick leave for every minute they miss from work, even if they work a regular schedule the rest of the week. Can we safely do that?

Do we have to pay health insurance opt-out bonus during FMLA leave?

01/09/2009

Q. Our company offers a health insurance opt-out incentive, paying employees $400 a month if they use their spouses’ insurance plans. We now have an employee going out on FMLA maternity leave. Do we have to keep paying her $400 per month?

Must we pay for short smoking breaks?

01/09/2009

Q. Would a brief clock-out (initiated by the employee) of less than 20 minutes, such as an impromptu smoking break or personal phone call break, need to be paid as work time?