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Employment Law

Warn bosses: Don’t speculate on workers’ medical limits

02/01/2007

Supervisors and HR professionals must avoid stereotyping employees who have medical problems and never make assumptions about workers’ abilities to perform the job. Making uninformed comments about physical ailments is a quick way to land in court …

Beware personal liability for COBRA, FMLA, state bias law

02/01/2007

As if life in HR weren’t hard enough, a federal court has clarified when you may be held individually liable for mistakes in administering anti-discrimination and benefit laws …

You can pay lost wages, then fire reinstated employee

02/01/2007

In a unionized workplace, it can be tricky when an arbitrator—while interpreting a collective-bargaining agreement with the union—second-guesses the employer’s decisions …

Reversing disciplinary decisions can spark bias lawsuit

02/01/2007

If you punished two employees for the same misdeed but only one asked you to reverse the decision, consider the legal ramifications first. If you grant “amnesty” to one employee but not the other, you could trigger a discrimination lawsuit …

Part-time, ‘as-needed’ employees can still sue for bias

02/01/2007

Employees can sue for discrimination if you illegally figure their race, sex, age, religion, disability or pregnancy status into their termination. That’s true even if an employee is a part-timer who works only a few hours on an as-needed basis …

Inheriting staff? Setting higher standards is perfectly legal

02/01/2007

If you’re part of a new management team bent on improving overall performance, don’t let lawsuit fears keep you from imposing higher standards on inherited staff …

Rejecting light-duty offer can stop workers’ comp

02/01/2007

Employers can cut their workers’ comp costs by having injured employees return to work as soon as possible. That may mean offering them light-duty positions if they’re not ready to resume more demanding jobs. But what happens if an employee rejects your light-duty offer? …

College sues feds over the right to post Christians-only job ads

02/01/2007

Geneva College in Beaver Falls recently filed a lawsuit against federal and state labor officials after it was asked to strike a Christianity requirement from help-wanted ads before posting them on Team Pennsylvania CareerLink …

Irony: Motherhood Maternity settles pregnancy-bias suit

02/01/2007

The EEOC has signaled that it will aggressively pursue employers that discriminate against pregnant applicants or employees. One ironic example: Motherhood Maternity has agreed to pay $375,000 to settle a pregnancy discrimination and retaliation lawsuit …

Funeral home company sued over wages, bias, harassment

02/01/2007

One of the world’s largest funeral home companies faces a class-action lawsuit by up to 6,000 current and former employees for failure to pay back wages and overtime of between $40 and $70 million …