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Discrimination / Harassment

Hennepin County driver files religious accommodation suit

01/13/2010

The tension between an employee’s right to religious accommodation and an employer’s need to get work done is at the heart of a case being heard in Hennepin County. A Seventh-day Adventist was fired after refusing to work between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, the Adventists’ Sabbath.

Could we have refused to hire waitress who now refuses to sing ‘Happy Birthday’?

01/13/2010

Q. One of the waitresses working in our restaurant claims her religion forbids her from singing “Happy Birthday” to customers. If, during her interview, we had identified this requirement as an essential job function, and if she said she couldn’t sing the song for religious reasons, would we have been within our rights to refuse to hire her?

Do we need new record-retention rules now that the Ledbetter law has been enacted?

01/13/2010

Q. I keep hearing that the Ledbetter Act means we may need to hold onto documents about employees beyond our current retention policies. What do we need to do to make sure our document-retention policies comply with the law?

Heed legal risks of recruiting via Facebook, LinkedIn

01/12/2010

Employers seeking Internet-savvy candidates have been flocking to social media sites in the past year. But employers (and their lawyers) are discovering a hidden problem in that recruiting-by-Facebook strategy: Depending too much on the sites could leave your organization vulnerable to age and race discrimination lawsuits.

Assigning black employees to black clients: Is that racial bias?

01/12/2010

Here’s a problem you might not see coming. Let’s say you have an employee who belongs to a protected class, and whose skills you believe will help when relating to others of the same protected class. Before you decide to assign work to the employee based on those skills, consider whether doing so is, in effect, unspoken segregation.

Tamp down lawsuits with good promotion records

01/12/2010

In today’s tough economic climate, more and more employees are willing to stay put, applying for promotions instead of looking for jobs in other organizations. That means more competition for promotions—and more opportunities for disgruntled employee to sue when they’re passed over.

Of course you have an anti-harassment policy; now make sure all your employees can use it

01/12/2010

Your organization probably has policies prohibiting sexual harassment, and you probably offer training for supervisors and employees alike on how the policy works. But that simply isn’t enough. You should have multiple ways for employees to report sexual harassment. The more ways you provide, the more likely a court will conclude that an employee who failed to report the harassment was acting unreasonably.

Stray comments unfortunate, but rarely prove discrimination

01/12/2010

HR professionals often worry needlessly when they hear that a supervisor has made an intemperate or insensitive remark. Fortunately, such comments seldom become the basis of successful lawsuits unless they are truly offensive or outrageous.

Hudson Valley Hospital not so sweet to diabetic employee

01/12/2010

Westchester County’s Hudson Valley Hospital will pay $142,500 to settle an EEOC charge in which a diabetic nurse claimed she suffered disability discrimination. Glorianne Romano asked to have three days in a row off each week following an episode when she went into a diabetic coma in 2007. Her doctor said she needed the time off to regulate her insulin treatments. At first, the hospital agreed, but then withdrew the accommodation, claiming Romano’s schedule was too disruptive.

When hiring, don’t overvalue interview skills

01/11/2010

Does your organization’s hiring process rely heavily on how applicants handle themselves during job interviews? If so, be aware that courts are often suspicious of such inherently subjective decision-making. If an applicant who belongs to a protected class can demonstrate qualifications that were at least as good or better than those of the chosen candidate from a different class, a court may conclude that interview performance was a smokescreen for discrimination.