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The Employer Handbook Blog

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A customer’s pref­erence for an employee of a certain gender usually does not justify sex discrimination — even at a strip club.

License: CC0 Public Domain Hypothetically, if I were to go to a gentlemen’s club, I would expect to see women dancing on stage for money. That’s what goes on there, I’m told. And hypothetically, if I were to go to a gentlemen’s club, and I were to purchase a beverage,…

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Forget what you heard. THIS, right here, will be the biggest employment law concern for employers in 2020.

SimmeD [CC BY-SA]I’ve seen a lot of ink spilled by employment lawyers about how #MeToo, new overtime rules, medical marijuana, and salary history questions will be the significant issues with which employers would have to deal in 2020. The Federal Trade Commission and I have other ideas. Last week, the…

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The ACLU and U.S. Chamber of Commerce AGREE on something. And it’s a pregnancy discrimination bill?!?

Image by Digital Photo and Design DigiPD.com from Pixabay Repent ye sinners! The apocalypse is nigh! No, the world isn’t really ending. So, keep your shirts on. I’m talking to you, HR. But, who would’ve guessed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Americans Civil Liberties Union would agree…

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SCOOP: The DOL has issued final joint-employer rules

Image by Hebi B. from Pixabay While you guys were watching the NFL playoffs yesterday, a little birdie told me that the U.S. Department of Labor had announced its final rule to update its joint-employer regulations. Here’s the skinny. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires covered employers to pay their…

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GOTCHA! You won’t believe how one company unraveled an employee’s ‘flat tire’ absence excuse

Image Credit: @sydneyywhitson on Twitter Fair warning, this post is more about pettiness than employment law. Do you have that employee? Let’s try that again. We all have that employee. S/he is always missing work because an aunt died, the dog was sick, grandmother died, flat tire, the same aunt…

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If DOL opinion letters turn you on, sit down, maybe grab a cigarette, and read this blog post.

By AgnosticPreachersKid – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link The U.S. Department of Labor could have rested on its overtime-rule laurels in 2020. Instead, the DOL has wasted little time releasing three new opinion letters in 2020. I’ll break them down for you below. FLSA2020-1: Addressing calculating overtime pay for a…

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“Smokers and other nicotine users need not apply.” Is that even legal?

By Augustus Binu, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Because I’m a lawyer, I’ll say it depends. Except, I won’t charge you 0.1 hours of my time to say it. Instead, I encourage you to go to SHRM’s website and read this article from Roy Maurer. Roy addresses a decision by the…

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A worker complained on Twitter about a $6 holiday gift from his employer. It didn’t end well.

Number55 [CC BY]A Toronto man who worked for the same company for six years no longer works there. All because of a tweet and a bottle of barbecue sauce. Multiple news outlets are reporting that an employee who received a $5.99 bottle of barbecue sauce from his employer as a…

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Federal appellate court instructs NLRB to reconsider whether it’s okay for an employee to use sexist language

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay Last Summer, the National Labor Relations Board asked the public to help it decide when employees should be allowed to make racist or sexist comments at work. I would have assumed that the answer is, you know, “never.” But, then again, I don’t make the…

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The results are in! Here’s what HR readers did to prepare their companies for the new DOL overtime rules.

Image by kalhh from Pixabay “Pardon me. But would you happen to have any Grey Poupon?” “But, of course.” That’s the conversation I imagine having with most of you based on the results of yesterday’s poll where I asked readers what your company has done to prepare for the new…