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Employment Law

How can employers get waivers of claims from terminated employees?

10/01/2007

Q. May an employer fire an employee and then ask the employee to sign a waiver of claims or severance agreement? …

Attendance discipline needs care if employee qualifies for FMLA leave

10/01/2007

Q. An employee of ours has attendance problems. Before we could counsel her on the attendance problems, she was approved for intermittent FMLA to care for her elderly mother. While she has taken FMLA days for her mother, she also continues to have attendance problems unrelated to her FMLA leave. Can we proceed with counseling and possible disciplinary actions while she is under FMLA? …

Under what circumstances can an employee challenge a termination?

10/01/2007

Q. If an employee believes he has been terminated unfairly, does he have a legal right to challenge the termination? …

If new job stinks, requested transfer can be retaliation

10/01/2007

When an employee requests a transfer after complaining about alleged harassment, don’t jump at the opportunity—only to place him in an unpleasant new environment. Merely honoring a request to be moved isn’t a defense against a retaliation claim. That’s true even if you provide the same pay and don’t change benefits, seniority or any other aspect of the employment relationship …

Don’t rely on broad diagnosis: Assess disability individually

10/01/2007

Millions of Americans have diabetes, and millions more have it but don’t know it. But with new medications and careful diet, most diabetics can control their condition and lead largely normal lives. That has implications for how employers handle their ADA obligations …

Have zero tolerance for offensive national-Origin comments

10/01/2007

A nation embroiled in war tends to be jittery and tempers run high. When anger and emotion seep into the workplace, things can get ugly. That’s why it’s important to remind everyone that you won’t tolerate comments, gags or jokes aimed at employees who may share ethnicity, religion or national origins with the “enemy” …

Combination discrimination claims don’t fly in Texas

10/01/2007

Sometimes, employees who think they have been discriminated against—and their attorneys—try novel approaches to make a claim. One of these is the so-called disability-plus claim, whereby the attorney tries to show that the employer discriminated against his disabled client by treating her worse than other disabled employees of another sex or race. But as the following case shows, disability-plus discrimination claims won’t always fly in Texas …

 

You can accommodate and still question employee’s disability

10/01/2007

Sometimes, it seems easier to just make an accommodation than argue about whether the employee requesting one is really disabled. But does making the accommodation mean you agree the employee is disabled? The answer is no. If the employee comes back asking for even more accommodations, you still can challenge her status.

Fire offender to decouple discrimination, employment action

10/01/2007

Remind upper-level managers: When a supervisor or mid-level manager makes comments that could be construed as racist or religiously motivated, it pays to act fast. In fact, firing the responsible manager sometimes can be the best way to go. That way, if the employee he disparaged later gets turned down for a promotion or a raise, it will be much harder for an attorney to show a connection between the supervisor’s biased views and the denied opportunity …

Labor sues Texas company for FLSA overtime violations

10/01/2007

The U.S. Labor Department sued Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay approximately $3 million in overtime wages to more than 500 former and current employees. The department claims employee records at the company’s Dallas facility failed to show the number of hours the poultry-processing employees worked each day and the total number of hours they worked each week …