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Employment Law

Burnsville hospital prevails in EEOC discrimination suit

04/08/2008
Sheila Smith, a former transport aide in the emergency room at Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville, filed an EEOC lawsuit alleging she suffered discrimination and retaliation because she is black. The court found that while the comments made about her  were “abhorrent,” they were made by co-workers, not supervisors, and did not rise to the level of creating a hostile work environment …

Charging employees for uniforms

04/08/2008
Q. We would like to require employees to pay for their work uniforms. Can we do this? …

Exempt employees and a reduced workweek

04/08/2008
Q. During our slow season, we would like to require employees to work just four days per week in order save on labor costs. Can we require exempt employees to participate? …

Charging falsification? Make sure you can back up claim

04/07/2008
Employees who don’t follow company rules should be disciplined and possibly terminated. But employers must make sure they can back up their claims. Otherwise, they may face lawsuits if the fired employees belong to a protected class …

Spotty promotion, training systems? Prepare for class action

04/07/2008
The rise of class actions makes it essential for HR professionals to explore exactly how their companies dole out training and promotion opportunities. If individual supervisors or managers have too much discretion, there may be trouble ahead. An “old boy” network may be alive and well …

Supersensitive employees? Don’t treat with kid gloves

04/07/2008
Don’t let fear of litigation allow one or two supersensitive employees to squash reasonable criticism and destroy workplace morale. Take, for example, an employee who happens to be a member of a protected class (e.g., race, gender or disability) and always seems to believe that supervisors are singling him out …

Quell the rumor mill while internal investigations progress

04/07/2008
Do you have safeguards to protect confidentiality while you conduct internal investigations of sexual harassment and other employee complaints? If not, you should. If an employer is careless and allows word of the allegations to get out to people who have no reason to know about them, the employer may face defamation claims …

Mandatory firing after year’s absence doesn’t violate ADA requirements

04/07/2008
Does your organization have a blanket policy that limits time off for any reason to no more than 12 consecutive months? If you apply that policy evenhandedly, you don’t have to worry that it violates the ADA’s requirement that you provide reasonable accommodations …

No light-Duty jobs open when employee returns? You don’t have to retain him

04/07/2008
Sometimes, injured employees use up all the leave their employer or the law allows before they’re ready to return to work. If the employee isn’t disabled as defined by the ADA, you can remove the employee from the payroll. (He may still be eligible for workers’ compensation payments.) …

Former Longview union official pleads guilty to embezzlement

04/07/2008
The former financial secretary and treasurer of Local 738 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, located in Longview, has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $40,000 over a three-year period …