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Employee Relations

If layoff decision affects only a few, no notice necessary

12/01/2007

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires employers to notify workers of a mass layoff if the affected site has at least 50 employees. But the U.S. Labor Department regulations interpreting WARN specify that employees in the field belong to the office they report to. What happens, then, when a regional office employs just a handful of workers? …

Blessed are the peacemakers: Firm provides biblical ADR

12/01/2007

Alternative dispute resolution—or ADR—has many proponents and detractors, but one Indiana attorney has devoted his practice exclusively to a biblically based ADR. Bill Blew, based in Fishers, uses a dispute resolution system developed by Montana-based Peacemaker AE Ministries …

Judge says prison harassment could have been deadly

12/01/2007

A lesbian prison guard has been awarded $850,000 after an administrative judge found that she had endured a “relentless, daily regimen of mental and physical threats” by a co-worker at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden …

Disciplining tardy, exempt employees

12/01/2007

Q. We have an exempt employee who is consistently late a few times a week, arriving anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours late. Can we discipline him for being consistently late? In addition, can we require him to work at set times—for example from 9 am to 5 pm? …

Unless there’s discipline, it’s not religious discrimination

12/01/2007

Employees whose employers turn down requests for time off to attend religious services can’t just run out and sue for religious discrimination. They have a case only if their employers discipline or discharge them for refusing to comply with the work requirements—for example, by skipping work to attend services …

Discipline tracking system beats discrimination claims

12/01/2007

Can your organization produce concrete evidence backing up every disciplinary decision it’s made? You need a tracking system that does just that. Here’s why …

Track all feedback to improve promotion process

12/01/2007

If your organization has lots of entry-level employees and a practice of promoting from within, you probably face a crowded field when trying to identify the best candidates for promotion. If that entry-level labor pool is also ethnically and racially diverse, you have to make sure your promotion process doesn’t favor one group over another. Here’s one way to pick the best of the best …

Follow the discipline rules in your handbook to defeat discrimination claims

12/01/2007

Your organization’s employee handbook exists for a reason. It serves as a simple and effective way to let employees know what the rules are and what you expect in the way of behavior. If you can show that employees received copies of the handbook and were expected to be familiar with its contents, you have a good shot at defeating any discriminatory discharge claims if you disciplined according to the rules set out in the handbook …

Jury: Noose at work doesn’t prove discrimination occurred

12/01/2007

A noose on a table doesn’t mean the same thing to an all-white jury as it does to a 64-year-old black man, says retired city of Cocoa worker James Daniels. A six-member jury dismissed Daniels’ race discrimination lawsuit against the city, which centered on an incident involving a noose left on a break room table. “Most white folks don’t know what blacks go through,” Daniels said …

One lost lawsuit doesn’t necessarily lead to more

12/01/2007

Has your organization lost a previous race discrimination lawsuit? Ouch! You can bet some of your employees filed away that information for future use. However, you can take heart in a court’s recent decision that having previously lost a discrimination suit doesn’t constitute “proof” that your organization continues to discriminate—unless the new case deals with exactly the same type of alleged discrimination …