Today, we have a guest blogger at The Employer Handbook. It’s Melissa Kluska. Melissa currently writes for St. Jude Retreats, a non 12 step alternative to traditional alcohol and drug rehab. As well as writing for St. Jude’s, Melissa enjoys blogging about health and relationships.
(Want to guest blog on an employment-law topic at The Employer Handbook? Email me).
That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post.”
Yesterday, I read this opinion about a white man who claimed that he lost out on a middle school boys basketball coaching job because the school didn’t like the fact that he was married to an Asian ethnic Chinese woman and they have seven mixed race children.
The plaintiff claimed that the school violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The school filed a motion to dismiss, claiming that the man could not state a claim under Title VII. The school prevailed because, well, I’ll let the court tell you:
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?)
The complete list follows after the jump…
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You’ve got an employee with performance issues. Big time! Initially, rather than fire her, you make fun of her behind her back put her on a series of performance improvement plans. But, that doesn’t result in — oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? — improvement.
So, you fire her.
Ah, but here’s the little wrinkle for today’s post. The poor performer experienced frequent migraine headaches and struggled with pain and other symptoms caused by endometriosis. As a result of these conditions, she frequently requested medical leave under the Family Medical Leave Act, which you afforded her.
Given the poor performer’s medical issues, before firing her, did you have an obligation to engage in an interactive dialogue with her, consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act to determine whether her health issues caused her performance issues?
The answer follows after the jump…
Today we have a guest blogger at The Employer Handbook. It’s Emily Neumann. Emily has practiced immigration law in Texas since 2005, representing both employers and immigrants. Neumann writes a blog on immigration law (immigrationgirl.com) and shares updates on Twitter (@immigrationgirl) and her Facebook page to help her clients stay informed of the latest news. She is a partner in Reddy & Neumann, P.C. in Houston and Dallas.
(Want to guest blog on an employment-law topic at The Employer Handbook? Email me).
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Yesterday, We Know Next, the muscle-bound social media arm of the Society for Human Resource Management, hosted a NextChat session on Twitter.
Oh, you don’t know NextChat?
NextChat is a one-hour session on Twitter, which runs every Wednesday from 3-4 PM EST on a topic du jour — that’s the soup of the day — affecting HR.
Each NextChat features 8 questions posed to an HR influencer. During theNextChat, other Twitter users may tweet along using the hashtag #nextchat, or simply follow along by searching for the #nextchat hashtag.
This week, the HR influencer was moi. (Go figure). The topic: HR’s 2013 Performance Review.
If you missed yesterday’s NextChat, check out all great tweets after the jump…
As my buddy Rubo used to say: “It’s like school on Saturday; no class.”
Read all about it — yesterday’s BIG federal appellate court decision; not my buddy — after the jump…
An employee-plaintiff who claims that she was discriminated against under the Americans with Disabilities Act due to her pregnancy alone, will lose her ADA claim 10 times out of 10. This is because pregnancy is not a disability under the ADA.
But what if that same employee plaintiff with an ADA claim alleges that the discrimination relates not to her pregnancy, but rather to her morning sickness?
Hmmm….
The answer after the jump…
Generally speaking, those who wait five years to complain about perceived sexual harassment in the workplace, don’t win lawsuits if they are eventually fired.
But what happens when the complaint takes the form of a status update on Facebook? Does that offer the employee extra protection?
Find out after the jump…
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