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Employment Law

Feel free to expand candidate search even if your policy favors hiring from within

04/10/2008
If, like many companies, you have a policy that encourages promotion from within, you may hesitate to look outside for additional candidates. Fear of a lawsuit might make you especially reluctant if one of the few internal candidates belongs to a protected class. As the following case shows, those fears are unfounded …

Jury to decide Michigan professor’s anti-Gay bias suit

04/10/2008
A Lansing Circuit Court judge has ruled that a jury trial is in order in the case of a discrimination lawsuit filed in 2005 by Peter Hammer, a former professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Hammer claims he was denied tenure because he is openly gay …

AAM strike wreaks financial havoc

04/10/2008
The ongoing strike that began in February by workers at five American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings (AAM) plants in Michigan and New York has led Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) to review AAM’s credit rating …

Top 5 mistakes employers make and how to avoid them

04/10/2008

Poor communications with employees isn’t just bad for business. It also creates a work environment that’s ripe for legal trouble. Stay out of the courtroom by taking time to explain your actions and make the workplace seem rational to employees. Here’s how.

Is there such a thing as intermittent childbirth leave?

04/10/2008
 Q. We have a question regarding FMLA leave following the birth of a child. One of our employees is pregnant. She has recently immigrated to the United States. She has informed us that she expects to take eight weeks of FMLA leave immediately after the child is born. Then after a few months, she would like to return to her home country to visit with family for a month. In other words, she wants to split up FMLA leave into an eight-week period and a four-week period. Can FMLA leave for a new child be split up in this fashion? …

USERRA and the choice of paying or not paying for health insurance

04/10/2008
Q. It has been our company’s policy to maintain health insurance coverage for the families of employees who are serving in Iraq. It has recently come to our attention that one such family includes a spouse who is working, and the spouse has declined health insurance coverage at her job because we have been providing it free of charge. I have been asked whether we have an ongoing obligation to provide for this family’s health insurance coverage while our employee is on leave to serve in the military …

ADA and reasonable accommodations

04/10/2008
Q. We have a two-story building with production operations on the first floor and administrative offices on both the first and second floors. There is no elevator in the building. An office employee who works in a department on the second floor has been off work for a back injury. Now he wants to return to work but cannot climb the stairs. Do we have to reassign the employee to the first floor? There is no available space there, and the employee’s work duties are on the second floor …

Consistently applied blanket-Leave limits don’t violate FMLA

04/09/2008
If you’re having absenteeism problems, consider instituting a policy that says an employee who exceeds an absence threshold will be automatically terminated—regardless of the reason. Such a policy can cover absences relating to personal or vacation leave, time off covered by workers’ comp and even FMLA leave …

Pigeonholing employees’ race can be tricky … and risky

04/09/2008
Exactly what is race? And who is a member of a protected class based on race? Does the color of one’s skin count more than the country of origin? Those are some of the questions a federal appeals court recently tackled …

Don’t hesitate to discipline a rude and insubordinate employee

04/09/2008
Nothing disrupts the workplace like a rude and nasty employee—especially one who thinks she’s smarter than everybody else and constantly tries to show it by criticizing co-workers and others. To stop the damage, you may have to act firmly, even if that means the employee may sue. If you back your actions with solid evidence, chances are a judge will throw out the case …