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Discrimination / Harassment

Employees’ hostile pranks spell setback for Fort Lauderdale

01/01/2007

Dogged for over a decade by lawsuits alleging racial and sexual discrimination, the city of Fort Lauderdale has been working to change that atmosphere. But two recent instances of hostile employee pranks marked a major setback for the city’s effort …

Homeland Security’s Miami office to pay $2.5 million in bias lawsuit

01/01/2007

When it comes to discrimination laws, you’d think the federal government would know the rules. Yet a jury recently ordered the U.S. Homeland Security Department to pay $2.5 million to a former employee in a bias lawsuit …

Tallahassee college learns a hard lesson in $34,000 payout

01/01/2007

Tallahassee Community College recently settled a discrimination lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department, agreeing to pay more than $34,000 in back pay and interest to a job applicant …

Big firms seeking partners that can prove staff diversity

01/01/2007

In recent years, large corporations have begun imposing work force diversity mandates on their suppliers. As a result, midsize organizations that want to win contracts scramble to prove diversity among their staffs …

North Carolina Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act

01/01/2007

The Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA) is North Carolina’s super anti-discrimination law combining elements of several federal laws, including Title VII, the Fair Labor Standards Act, OSHA and USERRA. The Employment Discrimination Bureau in the state Department of Labor (www.nclabor.com/edb/edb.htm) enforces REDA …

Handle application liars consistently: Reject all or none

12/01/2006

As an employer, you can’t always wait on a background check before offering a job, so you have to rely on applicants’ oral and written statements to make the offer. But when the background check comes back to reveal that the person lied, you have the absolute right to terminate that individual for dishonesty …

Contract will still stick, even if employee fails to read it

12/01/2006

When faced with a multipage employment contract, some job candidates and employees may be tempted to skip a careful reading before they sign on the dotted line. But state courts won’t excuse employees who claim that they didn’t understand the employment terms because they never read them …

Even Lateral Transfer Can Be Declared ‘Illegal Retaliation’

12/01/2006

Whenever one of your employees files a discrimination claim, you now need to be ultracautious about making any changes to that employee’s job. That’s because almost any change—including lateral transfers with the same pay and title—can now be deemed an illegal "adverse employment action" by the court …

Disability harassment costs Wall Street firm half million

12/01/2006

Wall Street securities firm LaBranche & Co. agreed to pay former trading assistant Peter Servidio $500,000 to settle his disability harassment lawsuit …

Co-Worker’s flirtation isn’t sexual harassment

12/01/2006

Casting admiring glances or making other such flirtatious gestures toward a co-worker isn’t sexual harassment under the Florida Civil Rights Act. That law doesn’t require employers to guarantee that employees won’t ever look at each other in a way perceived as a "come-on" …