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Employment Law

Required: Investigating all harassment complaints Not required: Providing a perfect workplace

12/05/2011
Sometimes an employee may feel uncomfortable with the close proximity and may even interpret another employee’s innocent behavior as sexual harassment. While you must respond to every sexual harassment complaint and investigate, that doesn’t mean each incident warrants corrective action. Use common sense.

Passage of time can kill retaliation claim

12/05/2011

There’s some good news for em­­ployers concerned about retaliation after an employee participates in protected activity such as testifying in another employee’s discrimination lawsuit. If a substantial amount of time has passed since the employee’s testimony, any disciplinary action you take probably won’t be enough to form the basis of a retaliation claim.

Employees can’t ‘volunteer’ to do extra work for free

12/05/2011

An hour worked must be an hour paid, according to the FLSA. For private employers, that means there’s no such thing as an employee putting in “volunteer” time. While the FLSA has been around for decades, some employers still think they can circumvent this inconvenient truth.

Your detailed records: Keys to legal victory

12/02/2011

You never know which employee will file a discrimination lawsuit. These surprise lawsuits often allege that the employer disciplined ­others outside the employee’s protected class less severely for the same transgression. Protect your organization by providing detailed reasons for any discipline at the time it occurs.

New Year, new laws covering veteran hiring, whistle-blowing

12/02/2011
Employers will ring in some new laws with the New Year, and those laws will bring challenges and opportunities.

Goodyear faces lawsuit over woman’s health-related firing

12/02/2011
Akron-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber faces charges of disability discrimination at a plant in North Carolina after it terminated a woman because she suffers from a menstrual bleeding disorder, menorrhagia.

Legality of new union poster faces hearing; ruling by Jan. 31

12/02/2011
A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 19 on two business-backed lawsuits challenging the legality of the NLRB’s new requirement that U.S. employers display a new workplace poster describing employees’ union rights.

Columbus offers one-time waiver for late WC premium penalties

12/02/2011
Employers that miss a workers’ compensation premium payment may apply for a one-time waiver of penalties under Gov. John Kasich’s “Common Sense Initiative.”

On to trial for worker advocate’s retaliation claim

12/02/2011
Employees and their lawyers are getting more creative with their lawsuits. Not content to rely on federal anti-discrimination laws, they add claims under state law, too. That increases their chances of making a claim stick.

After years of litigation, court orders cops’ promotion

12/02/2011
Federal courts don’t like being turned into proxies for HR departments, but they will act when necessary. That’s how the 6th Circuit recently came to order the immediate promotion of police officers in a discrimination case that has been in the courts for more than a decade and still isn’t finished.