The Americans with Disabilities Act bars employers from firing someone because they have a disability. It also requires employers to provide workplace accommodations to otherwise “qualified” individuals with actual disabilities unless going so would create an undue hardship. Someone who is “qualified” can perform the job’s essential functions with or…
After completing a 90-day orientation program for newly licensed nurses, a woman was denied a full-time position as a Registered Nurse (RN) at a hospital and, instead, transferred into a lower-paying position at another facility that the same employer operated. The woman — we’ll call her “Plaintiff” as we usually…
I won’t bury the lede. Here’s the takeaway from this post. If an employer doesn’t know that an employee is pregnant, it can’t possibly discriminate against her because she is pregnant. That’s pretty much what happened in this 11th Circuit decision that I read last night. Here are the pertinent…
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay A company operating an offshore oil rig paid one of its “tool pushers” anywhere from $963 to $1,341 per day. His paycheck, issued every two weeks, amounted to his daily rate times the number of days he had worked in the pay period. So if…
On February 21, the National Labor Relations Board decided (here) that nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions in a severance agreement that businesses give to employees are unlawful. The case involved a situation not unlike many your business may have encountered before. In 2020, COVID-19 restrictions caused the employer to furlough 11 employees because…
I’ve got some ‘splaining to do before we get into the meat and potatoes. First, if a company fires someone because they complain about discrimination, that’s retaliation. It doesn’t matter if the firing happens a day, week, month, or year later. If the complaint motivates the adverse employment action, and you get…
Last week, Governor New Jersey Phil Murphy’s office announced “a significant step for vulnerable workers in New Jersey” when the Governor signed A1474/S511, commonly referred to as the “Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights.” Here is a summary of some of the key provisions from the press release: In an effort…
I read on the U.S. Department of Labor website that unions help employees improve the workplace with “enhancements” such as “flexible scheduling, protections against harassment and safer working conditions – that improve the quality of jobs and workers’ well-being.” However, a union non-profit that touts itself as a provider of help to workers…
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Field Assistance Bulletin on employee telework is the blogging gift that keeps on giving. Last week, we addressed how to determine whether a remote employee is FMLA-eligible. Today, let’s get when you have to pay nonexempt remote workers for break time. In general, the FLSA…
Thank you for indulging me a day off from blogging yesterday. It’s tough to bounce right back when a referee rips your heart out of your chest with a ridiculous penalty call late in the fourth quarter of arguably the best Super Bowl game of all time. At least I’m…