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Discipline / Investigations

Ban on ‘Union Yes’ Button Isn’t Free-Speech Violation

11/01/2006

Texas public employers have broad rights to prohibit certain kinds of speech in the workplace, but those rights aren’t unfettered …

You can fire managers who ignore harassment complaints

11/01/2006

The best harassment policy in the world isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if employees don’t take it seriously. To show your policy has teeth, you have to let it bite …

Workers’ comp liability for aging employees

11/01/2006

Q. One of our employees is over age 70 and has had a broken foot, memory problems and a recent car wreck that caused some residual problems. Should we allow her to work? What can we do (if anything) to protect ourselves from potential workers’ comp claims should she injure herself?

Supreme Court: No Need to Investigate ‘Silent’ Victims

11/01/2006

When the U.S. Supreme Court began its new term, one of its first moves was to reject a case that could have created new responsibilities for employers in investigating sexual harassment …

Red alert: The 8 warning signs of violent employee behavior

11/01/2006

When violence occurs at work, employees may say their violent co-worker "just snapped." But, the truth is, people usually don’t snap. They display warning signs long before they actually act out. Too many supervisors let things like threats and argumentative behavior slide until it’s too late …

‘Suspicion’ not enough to win discrimination suit

10/01/2006

Employees need more than a hunch that their employer discriminates based on age. They need some kind of proof …

Insubordination policy trumps progressive discipline

10/01/2006

Many employers who have progressive discipline and no-fault attendance programs believe they must stick to progressive discipline for every attendance infraction. But that’s not so …

Don’t bait worker into insubordination; It’ll smell like bias

10/01/2006

Insubordination is a perfectly logical and legal reason to fire an employee. But juries will be suspicious if it looks like one of your supervisors "set up" the employee to give you a reason to terminate …

Employer not liable for manager’s unforeseen safety breach

09/01/2006

If one of your company’s supervisors knowingly ignores a safety rule, can OSHA hold the company liable? OSHA has long argued "yes" and has moved against employers on the premise that if the supervisor knows he’s violating the rules, then the company also knows …

Employee blogs raise privacy, confidentiality issues for employers

09/01/2006

Most organizations have comprehensive Internet, e-mail and electronic communications policies that spell out what’s acceptable usage and what’s not. But few employers have addressed a growing problem: the proliferation of employee Web logs, or "blogs" …