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Employment Law

Recapturing health insurance premiums following FMLA leave

04/01/2008
Answers to 3 questions about recovering health insurance premiums.

Employee working while on FMLA leave? Check certification

04/01/2008
If you find out that a worker out on FMLA leave is actually working for someone else, it’s time to check the employee’s FMLA certification. If the certificate says he’s “unable to perform work of any kind,” you can and should take action …

Check your org chart for hidden bias or preference

04/01/2008
It can happen before anyone in HR even realizes it: Managers or supervisors begin hiring applicants with ethnic or national backgrounds similar to their own. If you notice an unusually high number of similar employees concentrated in a division or section, it’s time for real efforts to make sure your staff fairly reflects the makeup of the overall work force …

Passed over a qualified employee? You can fix the problem

04/01/2008
Sometimes, employers make promotion mistakes that are purely unintentional. That can happen, for example, if an employer somehow overlooked a qualified employee for a promotion. If that employee is a member of a protected class, however, it’s easy to believe that the reason was illegal discrimination …

Insist on thorough documentation of background check results

04/01/2008
Take care if you run background checks as part of your job application process. Be sure to document how you handle reference check calls, and document requests. You may need the files later, especially if you don’t hire the applicant in the end and he claims discrimination …

Do promotion criteria rely on company or job seniority?

04/01/2008
If your organization uses seniority as a factor in making promotion decisions, make sure you think through what sort of seniority you really want to use—company seniority or job seniority. Make sure managers and employees alike understand which type of seniority counts for promotions …

Employees who agree to arbitration lose federal option in FMLA, NJLAD cases

04/01/2008
Employees who agree that they want an arbitrator to handle their absenteeism claims shortly after they have been disciplined can’t later file a federal FMLA or New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD) claim …

Former Trop owner fined for business problems, while union vote is overturned

04/01/2008
Columbia Sussex, former owner of the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, asked for an extension to pay a state-imposed fine of $750,000 until the property is sold. Meanwhile, an NLRB administrative law judge overturned an October 2007 election in which Tropicana security workers rejected union representation …

Prudential case may top $6 billion

04/01/2008
More than 350 current and former employees are seeking $6.5 billion in damages in a class-action lawsuit against Prudential Financial of Newark …

NLRB decision puts work-Preservation provisions in question

04/01/2008
Developers and general contractors, beware: The National Labor Relations Board has signaled it will take a closer look at work-preservation clauses. Work-preservation clauses typically limit subcontracting on construction projects to those companies that have signed on to a project labor agreement (PLA) …