Layoffs

Payday lenders fight consumer legislation

06/06/2008

Two payday lenders threatened to shut down operations in Ohio after the state Senate approved a bill that would limit consumers to four short-term loans per year and cap interest rates at 28% …

Restrict access to data about protected characteristics

06/03/2008

One of the most important HR functions is monitoring whether your organization is unwittingly discriminating when hiring, firing or promoting. To do that, you obviously have to know who belongs to what protected classification. At the same time, you don’t necessarily want the supervisors and managers who make employment decisions to have that information at their fingertips …

Any deviation from company rules may arouse suspicion

05/30/2008

When it comes to discrimination lawsuits, the earlier they are dismissed, the better. That’s one reason you don’t want to give a judge any incentive to send a case to a jury. Of course, deviating from your own company rules is one of those things that often leads judges to order a jury trial …

Arlington hotel settles pregnancy discrimination suit

05/30/2008

Arlington Host Corp., which formerly owned and operated the BallPark Inn in Arlington, settled a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit for $20,000 brought by the EEOC on behalf of a front-desk clerk who was pregnant when she lost her job …

Be prepared to prove reorg or cost cutting as layoff reasons

05/28/2008

Gone are the days when employers didn’t have to justify reorganizations or layoffs. Now—given the prevalence of electronic communications—you can expect a court to ask you to produce just about every piece of information used to determine who lost their jobs and who kept them …

Don’t let one rogue manager brand you an age discriminator

05/16/2008

Even if an employer has a good history of avoiding age discrimination in hiring, it can be sued for age discrimination if a reduction in force disproportionately affects older workers. Generally good hiring practices don’t prove that no discrimination occurred when drawing up the RIF list …

Election ’08: What you need to know about what workers think

05/06/2008

Election year politics has a strange way of focusing employers and employees on the larger issues—such as jobs, wages and the economy. HR pros should pay attention to election year buzz. Knowing what’s on employees’ minds as they go to the polls can help savvy employers get a glimpse of the future workplace.

$250,000 in federal aid to help Upper Rio Grande economy

05/05/2008

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it plans to give $250,000 to Texas to help the Upper Rio Grande region deal with the factory layoffs affecting several western counties …

Molson Coors to trim staff by outsourcing IT work

05/01/2008

Molson Coors Brewing Co. has announced plans to outsource technology work to Hewlett-Packard Co., resulting in job cuts of about 4% of its global work force, or 390 jobs …

Can we enforce noncompetes against staff we’ve laid off?