I want to give a little shoutout to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with whom I am spending the day today in Atlanta at the 22nd annual Examining Conflicts in Employment Laws (EXCEL) Training Conference.
So, today’s post is chock full of recent EEOC news and notes.
Do you have questions about filing your EEO-1 pay data for 2017 and 2018? The EEOC has a list of answers to frequently asked questions which should make what would otherwise root-canal experience feel more like, I dunno, getting that supermarket shopping cart with one bad wheel. It’s all relative, I guess.
Yes, it could be worse. For example, you could like this employer, which now faces an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit brought by the EEOC. According to the EEOC, an employee with Type II diabetes requested and received an accommodation to telework from home. Except, the EEOC claims that after the company granted the accommodation request, the employee’s supervisor constantly chastised her for teleworking, criticized her performance without basis, and finally fired her.
At least that employer has a chance to defend itself. These employers are writing a $200,000 check following the settlement of an ADA lawsuit brought by the EEOC. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, the employers’ chief medical officer pressured an employee who was hospitalized with colon cancer to voluntarily give up her work duties. The EEOC further alleged that the employee complained to HR and, yadda, yadda, yadda, she was fired.
(Maybe think about training your managers on how to treat employees with reasonable accommodations, document performance issues, etc.)
Speaking of human resources, I admire the integrity of this HR generalist. According to another recent EEOC lawsuit, a company offered a sales leader position to a 47-year-old man. Except, when the company learned the man’s age, it ordered the human resources generalist to rescind the man’s job offer. But, the human resources generalist refused! So, the company went over HR and fired the employee a few weeks later. Then, it paid $32,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit with the EEOC.
And that’s just three of the eight press releases from the EEOC this week announcing lawsuits and settlement.
Well, I’m off to present on medical marijuana and the workplace. If you’d like a copy of my slide deck, here it is.