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Employment Law

Audit discipline cases for hidden racial bias

07/15/2014
Supervisors sometimes enforce rules in a biased way or discipline members of a protected class more severely than others. But HR can stop this discrimination dead in its tracks with an internal informal audit. Regular monitoring (and fixing any problems you find) may be the best lawsuit-prevention tool around.

Hey boss! National origins comments never OK

07/15/2014
Remind supervisors that they must never make jokes (or assumptions) about employees based on where they were born, their origins or other national or ethnic characteristics.

You can enforce call-in rules for employees on FMLA leave

07/15/2014
Employers that have call-in procedures for absences can require that employees use them when requesting FMLA leave or updating their status. Simply having a doctor fax in medical excuses isn’t enough.

Remind bosses about risk of personal liability

07/14/2014

Quite often, employees’ attorneys make sure supervisors are separately charged and individually liable. Cite this trend during training to instill in your managers and supervisors that they need to follow the professional advice HR provides on discipline, hiring and other issues—or else face the consequences.

Labor pains: What to expect from U.S. Labor Department for rest of ’14

07/11/2014
Twice every year, federal agencies offer an unheralded but revealing peek at their upcoming priorities. The U.S. Depart­­ment of Labor’s most recent semiannual regulatory agenda provides enforcement clues that employers should pay attention to.

Senate bill would raise threshold for salaried workers’ OT pay

07/11/2014
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has introduced legislation that would make more exempt workers eligible for overtime pay.

‘Do As I Say’ Department: Disability nonprofit sued for disability bias

07/10/2014
A Detroit nonprofit formed to assist people with disabilities faces EEOC charges that it violated the ADA by discriminating against a deaf worker.

DOL announces new definition of ‘spouse’ for FMLA purposes

07/09/2014

United States v. Windsor struck down a Defense of Marriage Act provision that interpreted “marriage” and “spouse” to be limited to opposite-sex marriage for the purposes of federal law. Now the Department of Labor has issued rules extending FMLA protections to same-sex married couples.

Legislation will end employers’ annual wage-notice scramble

07/09/2014
On June 19, 2014, New York Assembly and Senate passed legislation eliminating a Wage Theft Prevention Act requirement that employers must provide wage notices to all employees by Feb. 1 each year.

NYC construction workers gain $4.9 million in back pay

07/09/2014
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has announced a settlement with federal contractor MDG Design & Construction, the prime contractor on the Grand Street Guild public housing construction project on New York’s Lower East Side.