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Employment Law

Give employees advance notice of severance plans, waivers

05/01/2003
Don’t spring severance-plan details on employees right before a layoff. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) says you must give employees advance notice …

Treat disability assistance requests with speed, or risk court action

05/01/2003
When an employee asks you to accommodate her claimed disability, don’t put the request on the back burner.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires an “interactive process” with employees …

Don’t let abusive staff use disability as excuse; you can fire for behavior

05/01/2003
Don’t allow employees to use their disabilities as justification for poor behavior, especially if it clearly threatens your workplace. Even if an employee is …

Indefinite leave of absence isn’t a reasonable accommodation

05/01/2003
Providing a leave of absence is one way to “reasonably accommodate” disabled employees. But the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn’t require you to wait …

Who’s an ‘outside sales rep’? Confusion causes $17 million error

05/01/2003
Make sure you’re not shoehorning delivery workers into an “outside sales rep” category to avoid paying them overtime. To be considered exempt under the …

Outsourcing workers won’t let you escape wage-and-hour laws

05/01/2003
When it comes to basic compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), simply calling your hourly workers “outsourced employees” won’t let you off the hook …

Monitoring staff phones? Hang up when you realize it’s a personal call

05/01/2003
You can monitor your employees’ communications, within reasonable limits. But you can’t let your monitoring escalate to eavesdropping and violate workers’ …

Do you approve dubious FMLA leave? You’re not alone

05/01/2003
Half of the human resource professionals polled recently say they’ve approved Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requests that they believed were not legitimate. They felt obligated to grant the leave …

EEOC launches ‘referral back’ mediation program

05/01/2003
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is starting a new voluntary mediation pilot program in which private-sector discrimination charges filed …

FLSA overhaul: What new overtime changes mean to you

05/01/2003
Your company could be forced to shell out more overtime pay to lower-paid workers under a long-awaited Labor Department modernization of the …