Close

The Employer Handbook Blog

Updated:

Take a page out of this employer’s playbook for dealing with FMLA and absenteeism.

When a company has an employee who is approved for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, sometimes that employer get nervous about parsing FMLA-qualifying absences from other sick days that have nothing whatsoever to do with the employee’s underlying serious health condition. The end result is an employee who…

Updated:

HR lessons from a cyclist fired for flipping off Trump’s motorcade

Image Credit: YouTube.com (screenshot) Juli Briskman was out riding her bicycle when she was passed on the road by Donald Trump’s motorcade. So, she showed ’em the middle finger. And, it was at that precise moment that a White House photographer traveling with the president as he left one of…

Updated:

A new SHRM-endorsed House bill promotes paid employee leave across the country

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is touting this bill, known as the “Workflex in the 21st Century Act” (you can view it here) as “a first-of-its-kind combination of guaranteed paid leave and increased options for flexible work arrangements.” Fair warning, I’m going to quote liberally from other sources for…

Updated:

5 more reasons why your workplace anti-harassment training is ineffective

“There’s Little Evidence Sexual Harassment Trainings Work,” wrote Madison Pauly in this article at Mother Jones. Ms. Pauly notes that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received over 162,000 EEOC Charges of Discrimination between 2010 and 2015. Plus, she cites a University of Oregon associate law professor’s study, which concluded that…

Updated:

Could your business withstand a tsunami of individual wage and hour claims?

Image Credit: Pixabay.com (https://pixabay.com/en/wave-water-sea-tsunami-giant-wave-11061/) And here you thought you were so smart by getting all of your employees to agree to class-action waivers and binding arbitration of all employment-related claims. Maybe not so much. Death by a thousand paper cuts. Yesterday, I read this article from Jon Steingart at Bloomberg Law’s…

Updated:

The”Mark of the Devil” and the hellish cost to defend employment litigation

On the day before Halloween, a Pennsylvania federal court (here) denied an employer’s attempt to have a religious-accommodation case dismissed early. This isn’t your run of the mill religious-accommodation case. “The Book of Revelation prohibits the mark of the devil” The plaintiff, a school bus driver, alleges that she was…

Updated:

Will a jury ever find out if the EEOC concludes that a defendant-company may have discriminated?

Suppose that your former employee files a Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After an investigation, the EEOC concludes that there is probable cause that your company violated one or more of the federal anti-discrimination laws that the agency is tasked with enforcing. So, your employee…

Updated:

7 last-minute ways for HR to be the wettest of wet blankets on Halloween

  Tomorrow is Halloween. Slacking this year, my family made our last-minute trip to the farm on Saturday for pumpkins. The kids held it together for the most part, except when it was every boy and girl for himself/herself in the “cornbox.” Fortunately, there were plenty of cider donuts available to…

Updated:

While not quite Harvey Weinstein claims, the allegations about this workplace will make your head spin.

My turn-ons include fantasy football and this ugly holiday sweater, which I cannot wait to debut this season. I also dig smart legal writing. Although, one could never discern that by perusing my dumpster fire of a law blog. To start to fix that, today, I’m going to quote liberally from a…

Updated:

When an employee complaining about harassment tells a supervisor, “Let’s keep it between us for now.”

You’ve heard the expression “loose lips sink ships.” Well, the opposite holds true when an employee complains to a supervisor about workplace discrimination. You’ll see what I mean when we go back to yesterday’s post. That’s the one about the “unofficial” office happy hour that officially landed the employer in…