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Employment Law

Feds propose new HIPAA privacy rules

07/13/2010
The Department of Health and Human Services has proposed new rules to strengthen HIPAA’s confidentiality and security measures. While your health insurance carrier will have primary responsibility for compliance, you need to be able to answer employees’ questions about their new privacy rights.

What are the rules on paying for weekend travel time?

07/13/2010
It’s one of the trickier wage-and-hour questions: How to pay hourly employees who travel on days they usually don’t work, such as Saturdays and Sundays. Learn the intricacies of determining which hours are paid, which are not and how the Portal-to-Portal Act exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act comes into play.

Using the Supreme Court’s model to prevent employment lawsuits

07/13/2010

You know you have an obligation to eliminate discrimination, harassment and retaliation. You know you have to make sure employees don’t harass co-workers or subordinates, or harm customers and others. On the other hand, you know applicants and employees have a right to privacy that is protected by state and federal laws. It’s a balancing act: Just how do you protect workers on the one hand, while respecting their privacy on the other?

Orlando’s Hilton Grand, EEOC settle pregnancy bias case

07/13/2010
Orlando-based Hilton Grand Vacations has agreed to settle an EEOC pregnancy discrimination lawsuit in which a former employee claimed the company asked her to resign during a difficult pregnancy in return for a promise to rehire her after her child was born.

Balance Staffing blindsided by recruiter’s ADA lawsuit

07/13/2010

Balance Staffing’s short-sighted treatment of a visually impaired recruiter will cost it $100,000 to settle a disability discrimination suit. Balance Staffing, a nationwide temp agency with operations in Florida, hired Jocelyn Snower. Snower was an experienced recruiter, but company owner Robert Feinstein did not know she was blind when he hired her. When he found out, he immediately fired her …

Bank of America workers sue for overtime

07/13/2010

Workers at Bank of America’s retail branches and call centers in five states have filed a lawsuit claiming they are due unpaid overtime from the banking giant. The suit, filed in federal district court in Kansas, alleges the bank requires employees to work more than 40 hours per week, but only pays them for 40.

No notice when suing gov’t for workers’ comp retaliation

07/13/2010

Floridians who want to sue local governments or the state for personal injuries must give the government advance notice that they are preparing a lawsuit. But what about claims for retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim when the governmental unit is the employer?

Offering new employee higher pay than incumbent of opposite sex? Document why

07/13/2010
Sometimes, you really do need to recruit someone from outside the organization—someone who may already be earning more than you usually pay your employees. When making a hire like that, make sure you document why you chose to top existing salaries, especially if the new hire is the opposite sex of any incumbents.

When an abusive supervisor is equally intolerable to everyone, is it harassment?

07/13/2010
As an HR professional, you’re constantly being called on to decide whether an employee’s rights have been violated. Take, for example, a manager who does a lot of indiscriminate yelling. As long as he  doesn’t say anything outrageously linked to sex or race, there may be nothing illegal about the behavior. But explaining that to the affected employees can be difficult.

Make it one of HR’s goals: Ensure everyone gets training on harassment

07/13/2010

Courts have long said that employers are supposed to be proactive about preventing and stopping sexual harassment in the workplace. Employers know or should know that simply having a sexual harassment policy in place isn’t enough—they have to aggressively enforce that policy. What employers may not fully realize is that no one within the organization is exempt from education, training and discipline.