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Employment Law

You can fire managers who ignore harassment complaints

11/01/2006

The best harassment policy in the world isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if employees don’t take it seriously. To show your policy has teeth, you have to let it bite …

Check workers’ EEOC, PHRC claims for errors

11/01/2006

If you receive an EEOC or PHRC complaint, don’t jump the gun to answer the charges. Carefully inspect the documents. If you don’t question obvious problems now, such as lack of a verified signature, you lose the right to raise that issue later …

Lesson From Tiffany’s Lawsuit: Don’t Ban On-Site Breast-Feeding

11/01/2006

New Jersey employers can’t interfere with employees or customers who breast-feed their children in public, as Tiffany and Co. learned the hard way …

‘Meetings’ on Religion/Politics May Violate New Intimidation Law

11/01/2006

Make sure your managers and supervisors know that politics and religion are individual choices and don’t belong in the workplace. Otherwise, you could face stiff fines or penalties under New Jersey’s new Worker Freedom from Intimidation Law …

Pregnancy of employee’s child may trigger FMLA leave

11/01/2006

The FMLA allows employees to take job-protected leave for the birth or adoption of their child. But can an employee legally take FMLA leave when his or her child is having a baby? In most situations, the answer is "no." But that’s not always the case …

You can delay disability accommodations for safety reasons

11/01/2006

While the ADA entitles disabled employees to workplace accommodations, it’s important to recognize that health and safety always take the front seat …

Infertility is considered a disability under ADA

11/01/2006

Employees who are infertile may qualify for reasonable accommodations under the ADA. That’s true even if the underlying medical condition that caused the infertility has been cured. As a result, you may be required to give infertile employees time off for fertility treatments and even adoption planning …

Ethnic name isn’t a ‘Head-Start’ to bias claim

11/01/2006

Employees whose names people associate with a particular religion, origin or ethnicity can’t automatically claim that their name led to discrimination. If that were the case, anyone with such a name would have a leg up on other employees in every discrimination case …

Race-Based assignment isn’t always discrimination

11/01/2006

It’s typically not wise to assign employees to working groups based on race, sex or any other protected characteristic. But you won’t always be liable for discrimination in such cases. Just make sure you have a valid business-based reason for doing so, and then apply that policy consistently to affected employees …

Car pooling isn’t paid time unless employer requires it

11/01/2006

Employees’ typical home-to-work commutes are not compensable time, and that doesn’t change just because employees meet up at a designated place and take a car pool or van pool to work …