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Safety/Health

@Twitterers: Watch what you tweet! @Videographers: Grow up!

05/19/2009

Employees do the darnedest things, and it’s often up to HR to clean up the resulting mess. Better to have prevented it in the first place. Two recent news stories point out problems that could have been stopped with simple policies on use of technology in the workplace. With the right handbook lingo, much corporate embarrassment could have been avoided.

How to prepare your workplace for a possible flu pandemic

05/13/2009

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have for years predicted that a virulent influenza outbreak could kill tens of thousands, hospitalize hundreds of thousands and sicken millions. Regardless of how the swine flu crisis plays out, it should be a wake-up call for employers. If you haven’t already, now is the time to undertake pandemic planning efforts.

Hey, look, we’re on TV! Better fire that guy!

05/06/2009

The U.S. Department of Labor has settled with Triple B Cleaning, a Houston company, that it claims illegally fired an employee who had complained about workplace safety issues to local news media.

$108,000 OSHA penalty for manufacturing company

05/06/2009

OSHA has announced that a Texas manufacturer faces $108,000 in proposed penalties for failing to abate safety violations after a worker died from an electrical shock. In January 2008, OSHA flagged six violations against JD Manufacturing, doing business as Arrow Waste.

Being overly friendly isn’t harassment

05/06/2009

Title VII protects employees from discrimination based on sex, and sexual harassment is sex discrimination. That doesn’t mean, however, that every unwanted work relationship is sexual harassment. As a recent case shows, an obsessive interest, unrelated to sex, by one employee in another isn’t prohibited.

Prepare your workplace for a possible flu pandemic

05/05/2009
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Can we ban weapons anywhere on our premises?

05/04/2009

Q. I know I can prohibit anyone, including employees, from bringing weapons into the workplace. Can I expand the same prohibition to the rest of my property, such as the parking lot?

Bill would shift responsibility for workplace safety rules

04/27/2009

State Sen. Doug Berger is not happy with the way the state labor commissioner is enforcing workplace safety laws. He has proposed a bill that would strip workplace safety enforcement duties from Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry and move them to a yet-to-be-created agency called the Employment Safety and Security Division …

Defend against retaliation claims: Good records can stop whistle-blower complaints

04/17/2009

Whistle-blowing employees almost always expect to experience retaliation. They start looking for it as soon as they file a complaint or bring a safety issue to their employers’ attention. Smart employers anticipate this and make absolutely sure that any discipline, layoff or other adverse employment action is wholly justified before they implement it.

Good news: Former employees can’t just keep filing lawsuits

04/17/2009

Here’s some encouraging news for employers. Courts are cracking down on employees who file seemingly never-ending successions of lawsuits. They’re dismissing such suits fast. But a court can do so only if you let it know that the former employee has already filed (and lost or won) a previous round of litigation.