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Employment Law

Manager mistakes: 3 key lessons from the courtroom

07/30/2012
It’s always smarter—and less expensive—to learn about employment law from others’ mistakes, rather than your own. Here are three new court decisions that serve up great lessons for any manager:

Lessons from the SHRM 2012 conference

07/27/2012
Here are some nuggets of employment law advice from the speakers at this summer’s Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Atlanta.

When woman returns from maternity leave, must she return to her exact former job?

07/27/2012
Q. When an employee returns from maternity leave, do we have to give her the very same job she had or can she be put to work in a different type of position?

The ‘perceived as’ theory of discrimination in Pennsylvania

07/27/2012
An intriguing discrimination case in New Jersey raises complicated issues that Pennsylvania courts may one day have to address: discrimination claims based on perceived membership in a protected class.

School drops teacher’s contract after son comes out

07/27/2012
Sharon Wright, a former teacher at Covenant Christian Academy in Harrisburg is suing the private school, claiming officials there made her life intolerable after her son revealed he is gay on a social media website.

EEOC won’t pay legal costs until case runs its course

07/27/2012
There’s no collecting attorneys’ fees from the EEOC in mid-litigation. A court said that it must wait until a case ends.

Track your fair and equitable discipline to prove you don’t discriminate

07/27/2012
Even an employee who was terminated for good reasons can win a discrimination lawsuit if she can show that someone outside her protected class wasn’t fired for the same transgression. That’s why you must track all discipline.

Separate who approves FMLA, who disciplines

07/27/2012
Make sure someone other than the supervisor who ordinarily disciplines an employee is responsible for approving and administering FMLA leave. By separating those functions, you minimize the risk that an employee might be able to connect FMLA leave with an adverse action such as termination.

Consider ADA before applying tardiness rules

07/27/2012

When an employee tells her supervisor she has a disability that makes it hard for her to get to work on time, it’s critical to factor that into any decision to apply a no-fault tardiness policy. Refusing to do so may be disability discrimination.

Could your time records withstand scrutiny?

07/27/2012

If you can’t show your time records are accurate, lawsuits claiming unpaid over­­time can get costly. That’s because—absent reliable employer records—courts will let employees fill in the timekeeping details. Make sure your records are easily ex­­plained and tamper-proof.