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Q&A

Problem employee—and she hasn’t even started!

09/02/2008
Q. We just hired a new employee, but there were problems even before she started. She delayed her start date and provided an excuse. I called her former employer and learned she had lied to me about her prior salary and about her departure date from that employer. If I had known the truth, I doubt I would have hired her. Now the fact that I know she lied to me even before she started work leaves me with the conclusion that I can’t trust her. Can I fire her even before she starts? …

How should we pay for weekend travel time?

08/27/2008
Q. How do we pay hourly employees who are traveling on a day that’s not considered a workday, like Saturday or Sunday? What if they normally have a 10-minute commute to the office but instead they have to go to the airport, and the airport is an hour from their homes? …

Ensuring the confidentiality of HR info

08/27/2008
Q. I’m the HR director of a 45-employee company and have one assistant. Due to the firm’s growth, I’m considering giving my assistant more responsibility. My concern: The assistant is very friendly with about 10 other employees, two of which are her roommates. What’s to stop her from divulging information to her friends? I have said nothing to her about my concerns yet. What can I express to her without overstepping her legal rights? …

Handling a boorish union rep

08/27/2008
Q. One of our employees serves as a committee member for a labor union that represents some of our employees. He uses his union position to protect himself from our company’s policy on insubordination. Does management have a right to ban this employee from the property when he conducts labor business because of his combative, disrespectful and intimidating manner? What rights does management have under this circumstance? …

Must we translate our handbook?

08/27/2008
Q. If an employee speaks Spanish and doesn’t understand English, am I required to have my handbooks and other policies translated into Spanish? Is the handbook valid if the employee signs but does not understand the content?  …

Employee showed up tattooed and pierced: Can we now implement a dress code?

08/26/2008
Q. We are a small “mom and pop” restaurant that promotes a family atmosphere. Recently, one of our waitresses got a tattoo on her forearm and an eyebrow piercing. We do not have a formal dress code, but generally we do not want our employees to display tattoos, and we prefer limiting visible piercings to two in each ear. Because we think the waitress’s appearance is inappropriate for our restaurant, we are considering implementing this policy through a written dress code that we will distribute to all employees. Is our planned dress code legal? …

Is it legal to discipline an employee for tardiness by suspending her without pay?

08/26/2008
Q. I work in HR at a customer call-in center. To make sure we have enough coverage to handle calls, we have a strict tardiness policy. Recently, one of our customer service agents was late for work several days in a row. She is an otherwise outstanding performer and we don’t want to fire her. In the alternative, we would like to suspend her for one week without pay. Is that legal? …

Could a court order force us to compromise our employees’ privacy?

08/26/2008
Q. I heard that Google is being forced to hand over YouTube access logs to Viacom as evidence in a copyright suit. This seems like a major privacy issue. Our company provides free health information to our employees over the Internet. Our internal web site users have created employee profiles that include personal information such as their names and e-mail addresses. Could we be forced to hand over our user information if we ever became involved in litigation? …

Is video surveillance of employees legal?

08/26/2008
Q. My family owns a chain of electronics stores. We suspect that employees have stolen some merchandise. We want to install surveillance cameras in our inventory storage room and possibly near the back door of the store where the theft occurred. Are there any legal issues that we should take into consideration? …

May we demand applicants pay for medical exams?

08/22/2008
Q. Our company requires applicants for certain classes of jobs to have medical examinations as a condition of employment. Can we require the potential employee to pay the costs of the medical examinations? …