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Louisiana

Firing during FMLA leave? Prove FMLA wasn’t reason

11/04/2021

Employees cannot be fired for taking FMLA leave. If you must terminate someone who has taken FMLA leave, be prepared to show it had nothing to do with their leave-taking. Do that by contemporaneously documenting what led to the termination and when you made the decision to fire.

Insist on HR approval before revoking offer

09/23/2021

As an HR professional, your role is to help your organization run well while staying out of legal trouble. Doing that means guiding hiring and firing decisions so they don’t inadvertently trigger a lawsuit. Train all your supervisors to seek your input before acting on any hiring or firing decision.

Apply leave policy equally to all employees

08/13/2021

You probably have a well-defined leave policy that gives employees time off for vacations, illness and tending to personal business. Whether you provide separate pots of leave or lump it all into paid and unpaid time off, your leave policy must treat all employees equally.

Poor time records? Court will believe workers

07/15/2021

Sloppy or incomplete payroll records will doom you in any disputes over employees’ pay. As this new ruling shows, if your organization fails to show detailed records or policies—especially about disputed off-the-clock work—the court will use your employees’ estimates of their work hours to determine your liability.

Supreme Court won’t hear racial slur case

06/01/2021

Can employers be liable for the single use of an offensive word? A disgruntled employee wanted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on that question, but justices on May 17 declined to take his case.

ADA: You can make attendance ‘essential’

04/15/2021

Some employers require timely and regular attendance as an essential job function. However, the ADA imposes limits on those expectations, requiring reasonable accommodations of some absences. Key word: Some.

Workers might soon find it harder to file class actions

01/28/2021

It just became a lot harder to certify a class for a Fair Labor Standards Act lawsuit—at least in states covered by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

EPA: Employer must prove pay bias didn’t relate to sex

01/21/2021

Some employers assume that employees who sue under the Equal Pay Act must prove that sex caused the disparity. That’s backwards. Courts want employers to prove the reason for the disparity was something other than sex.

Document, date every disciplinary detail

04/16/2020

Workers who suspect they are about to be fired may try to short-circuit the termination process by claiming discrimination, harassment or retaliation. It’s an intimidation tactic. Fight back with documentation of every step of the disciplinary process, with dates when key events occurred.

Confessing previous firing doesn’t equal defamation

03/02/2020

Potential employers often ask up-front whether an applicant has been fired for cause in the past. Recently, a fired worker tried to claim that having to reveal the past amounted to self-defamation. It didn’t work.