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Employment Law

HR pros take note: You can be held personally liable for wage-and-hour violations

08/06/2018
Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, a relatively high-level employee may be held personally liable for a company’s failure to follow the overtime and minimum wage rules set out in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Employers must stop customer harassment, too

08/06/2018
There are a few workplace scenarios in which the nature of the job makes it more likely that sexual harassment may occur. But even then, once an employer knows harassment is happening, it has an obligation to stop it.

Reasonable accommodation could be called retaliation

08/02/2018
If you accommodate a disabled employee, but the accommodation winds up adversely affecting the employee instead, you could get sued for retaliation.

Document worker’s angry, disruptive behavior

08/02/2018
Are meetings with a particular employee contentious? If so, make sure you document those interactions at the time they happen. Then, if the employee sues, alleging discrimination or a hostile environment, you have facts to back up your version of events.

Home Depot could pay for mishandled firing

08/02/2018
Maurice Rucker, a 60-year-old black man, was a long-time employee at a Home Depot store in Albany, N.Y. He doesn’t work there anymore. His response to a customer’s racist rant got him fired.

IHOP stores settle with teens for $1 million

08/02/2018
The EEOC has reached a $975,000 settlement with two IHOP franchises in Illinois over allegations that management turned a blind eye to sexual harassment directed at teenage employees.

Shapiro among officials pushing back against PAID

08/01/2018
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is one of 11 state AGs who recently told Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta they have big problems with his agency’s new Payroll Audit Independent Determination program.

Five women leave Harrisburg, Pa. TV station in four months

08/01/2018
Harrisburg television station WHTM ABC27 is the target of a Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission complaint that alleges Robert Bee, the station’s general manager, created a hostile work environment for women.

Regular safety complaints could spell legal trouble

08/01/2018
Be careful if a worker files a steady stream of safety complaints. If those complaints are followed by an accident or incident and the worker is disciplined for something seemingly unrelated, he may still be able to make a whistleblower complaint.

When planning layoffs, conduct audit to ensure there’s no age discrimination

08/01/2018
Calculate the average age of the workers you plan to retain and compare it to the workers you plan to terminate.