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Employment Law

New restaurant owner finds predecessor cooked the books

04/03/2013

Three lessons from a pending lawsuit in Dallas: 1. If your employees work overtime, pay them for it. 2. Don’t falsify records to cover your tracks. 3. Don’t sell your business to some­­one who is suing you for stiffing them out of overtime.

Crack down on retaliation: Your #1 risk in job-bias lawsuits

04/03/2013
Supervisors in your organization probably know it’s illegal to discriminate based on race, age, sex, religion or disability. But apparently far fewer realize those same federal laws also make it illegal to retaliate against people for voicing complaints about such discrimination.

Complaining to top exec isn’t protected whistle-blowing

04/03/2013
In a case decided the same day as UTSWMC v. Gentilello, MD, the Supreme Court of Texas concluded that complaining to senior leadership about alleged illegal activity doesn’t constitute protected whistle-blowing under the Texas Whistleblower Act.

Serial complainer requires patience, good records

04/03/2013
Patience is a virtue. Practice it, especially when you have an employee who seems to gripe about everything. Sure, serial complainers are a pain. Don’t make matters worse by striking back.

Ensure FMLA eligibility before approving leave

04/03/2013
Here’s a problem that’s quite common for employers with several work sites spread far apart and one common HR department. Many employees may be eligible for FMLA leave, but some may not be if they work at a location with fewer than 50 employees that’s located within 75 miles of the main office.

Reinstate employee to equivalent job after FMLA leave

04/03/2013
When an employee finishes FMLA leave, she is entitled to return to the same or an equivalent job. The reinstatement provision gives employees some flexibility. How­­ever, it’s a mistake to think it’s OK to return the employee to any old job.

Keep careful pay records, or else courts will take employees’ word for it

04/03/2013
Here’s another powerful reason to maintain meticulous wage-and-hour pay records. If you don’t—and a worker claims you owe him money for unpaid work—the court will rely on the employee’s recollection or records.

Dallas company’s temp shell game doesn’t fool DOL

04/03/2013
Dallas-based Nieman Printing thought it had it all figured out when it hired two temp agencies to employ the same workers doing the same work, but on different days. The strategy: Keep workers from ever putting in more than 40 hours per week for one employer. Desired result: No overtime pay! DOL investigators saw through the charade.

Control nixes independent contractor status

04/03/2013

The usual wage-and-hour rules don’t apply to independent con­­tractors because they aren’t em­­ployees. But that doesn’t mean you can forget about the FLSA by deciding to just call some­­one an independent contractor. What really counts is how much control you assert over the individual in how and when she does the work.

Know what really counts as whistle-blowing

04/03/2013

Here’s some good news for em­­ployers: According to a recent Supreme Court of Texas decision, workers who complain to their super­­visors about alleged illegal activities aren’t protected from retaliation under the Texas Whistleblower Act. That’s true even if the supervisor is responsible for legal compliance.