You know that scientist in the action movie who has all the right answers if only the government would just pay attention? Eric B. Meyer, Esq. gets companies HR-compliant before the action sequence. Serving clients nationwide, Eric is a Partner at FisherBroyles, LLP, which is the largest full-service, cloud-based law firm in the world, with approximately 210 attorneys in 21 offices nationwide. Eric is also a volunteer EEOC mediator, a paid private mediator, and publisher of The Employer Handbook (www.TheEmployerHandbook.com), which is pretty much the best employment law blog ever. That, and he's been quoted in the British tabloids. #Bucketlist.
Leave it to Career Builder to run a survey seeking the most unusual co-worker holiday gifts. Camouflage toilet paper made the list.
(Well, at least it wasn't used, amirite?)
Let me tell you about a teacher in South Dakota. In 2010, she received a letter communicating concerns about her performance. Subsequent evaluations of the teacher's classes noted several deficiencies. So, the school placed the teacher on a performance improvement plan.
It was right around this time that the teacher met with a physician's assistant, who diagnosed the teacher with "anxiety and depression, likely stemming from her concerns about possibly getting fired."
It may not be so glamorous working for Gaga.
Stefani Germanotta, better known to you people (I call her Stefani) as Lady Gaga, employed her friend, Jennifer O'Neill, as her personal assistant from in 2009 and again between 2010 and 2011. In 2010-2011, Ms. O'Neill made an annual salary of $75K, for which she claims to have been at Stefani's beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Consistent with its strategic plan to provide up-to-date guidance on the requirements of antidiscrimination laws, last week, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued this press release in which it announced that it had revised guidance on how the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to applicants and employees with cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, and intellectual disabilities.
Unquestionably, when it come to tackling the Americans with Disabilities Act, one of the biggest issues affecting the workplace and accommodating disabled employees is providing leave as a reasonable accommodation. Anecdotally, a question that plagues most employers is just how much leave is enough?
We know that an indefinite leave of absence is not a reasonable accommodation. But, what about when an employee takes one leave, after another, after another.
When is enough enough?
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Is this Retaliation 2.0?
Two weeks ago, Adria Richards attended an industry conference at which she overheard sexual jokes from two attendees sitting behind her during a session. So, she complained...on Twitter:
And then she blogged about it here. The social-media complaints resulted in one of the joke tellers getting fired. And, last Wednesday, Ms. Richards tweeted that her employer supported her.
I have three kids, ages three and under. So a vacation for me is the half hour of quiet time I get in the bathroom every morning.
It's not like the old days.
I remember Spring Break '97 in the Bahamas. Sun, beach, water sports, and a couple of adult beverages.
I was reading this federal court opinion over the weekend. It involves a disability-discrimination claim brought by a deaf man who applied to become a lifeguard at a county pool, but didn't get the job because the county thought his disability would compromise swimmer safety. Plus, the town was not convinced that it could accommodate the deaf applicant because it couldn't be 100% certain that he could safely be on the lifeguard stand alone, without someone constantly by his side.
Folks, I'm guilty.
Mo bagels, mo problems.
Let's take you back to August, 2010. David Ross, the plaintiff, attended a meeting of the Colorado Department of Transportation's Staff Bridge Unit Leaders, where the annual employee appreciation luncheon was discussed. During the meeting, another employee noted that the luncheon was scheduled during the observance of Ramadan and requested that the luncheon be rescheduled so that one of his subordinate employees, Ali Harajli, an observant Muslim, could attend. An alternative date was proposed and approved by Mr. Ross's supervisor.
When an employer is faced with a sexual-harassment lawsuit, one of its best defenses is that the company took reasonable care (e.g., policy, training) to prevent sexual harassment (and then addressed complaints in a manner that is reasonably designed to end the sexual harassment)
I have three kids three and under. Like I have time on the weekend to come up with 172 anythings...let alone something requiring a scintilla of creativity, save channeling my inner Andy Warhol at the children's museum yesterday -- 4 likes on Facebook for the uncensored version, yo.
The title of this post is comprised of the seven poorly-chosen words from a Vice President of Operations at a Detroit casino right before the casino terminated a white employee for allegedly botching supervision of a dealer card shuffle.
What do you think? Do we have a live race-discrimination claim? Oh yeah, we do! Details after the jump, as well as thoughts on employers who strive to maintain racial balance in the workplace...
HR heads are still spinning as they try to digest what the National Labor Relations Board has tried to accomplish this year.
The Acting General Counsel has issued confusing reports on social media. The Board has also attempted to create quickie union elections, and require companies to abide by a union-poster rule. Why, just a few weeks ago, the Board ruled that an "at will" provision in an employee handbook may violate the National Labor Relations Act. That one is still a head-scratcher for me.
