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The Employer Handbook BlogPaid sick leave in Philly may be happening in 2015
It sounds like Mayor Nutter is warming up to the idea of requiring Philadelphia employers to provide employees with paid sick leave.
How can that be? Find out after the jump…
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Do you have a “super” anti-harassment contract with your employees?
I’m gonna pause for a sec while you go and grab a copy of your company’s employee handbook. Now open it up to the anti-harassment policy and, click through, because your world may be about to be rocked…
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Federal court permits discrimination against transgender employee
Under federal law (Title VII), employers cannot discriminate because of one’s sex. While Title VII does not explicitly coverage transgender employees (i.e., someone born female who presents male, and vice-versa; also known as gender identity), the EEOC’s position is that transgender employees are protected too. Indeed, they’ve begun filing federal lawsuits on behalf of transgender employees who claim to have been discriminated against.
But, Courts have not uniformly accepted the EEOC’s position. Indeed, the state of the law here is very much unsettled.
Just before Thanksgiving, a Texas federal court considered whether an employer can discriminate under Title VII based purely on gender identity…and get away with it.
More after the jump…
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Black Friday HR-Dorkbuster!!! Silent ADA accommodation requests
[Because “The one about the guy who got fired and then requested a reasonable accommodation” isn’t clickbait enough].
More on the timing of ADA accommodation requests after the jump…
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What the EEOC plans to tell employers about wellness programs
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is obsessed with wellness programs.
Or, as the EEOC likes to describe them “‘so-called’ wellness programs.” And not in a “yay, so-called wellness programs are super” kinda way.
No, in recent months, the EEOC has initiated litigation against companies (example, example, example) claiming that they violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act by both requiring medical examination and penalizing employees who decline to participate.
Apparently, the ABA Journal received my large, white bag with the $ on it
Or maybe it’s the good karma from yesterday’s Social Media @ Work giveaway.
Whatever it may be, I’ll just smile and say thank you to the ABA Journal for honoring The Employer Handbook (again) as one of the top blogs in America.
Special props also go out to the other blogs honored in the Labor and Employment Category:
An early holiday gift to my reader (readers?)
Frankly, I’m disappointed, you guys.
To the 10,002 of you who read this blog, only 1 showed up at the Social Media @ Work event my firm hosted earlier in the month at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Ok, even my parents and kids skipped this one. (I almost had two of my kids in the audience. I offered some yellow post-it notes and a blue highlighter, but they bargained hard for an extra Jell-O cup, and I wouldn’t cave).
What you need to know about the FMLA (in a sweet infographic)
Thank you to my friends at BambooHR for passing this along:
Telling an employee returning from open-heart surgery, “Don’t die at the desk” is bad. Very bad.
Also, threatening to drag that employee outside and throw him in a ditch. Yeah, that may fracture a law or two. I’m thinking the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Heck, even the Taliban would frown on that.
I got more on this for you after the jump…
EEOC: Complaints of discrimination down big in FY14; Mediation rules!
Yesterday, the EEOC issued its FY 2014 Performance Report. Here is a link to the press release.
Now, I’ll admit it. I didn’t read the whole report. Blogging has got me all messed up. I can’t read anything that’s more than 250 words. So, I just stopped at the part in the report where it said that total charges dropped by 5,000 in FY14. So, I didn’t get to the part of the report that credits this blog, in particular, for the drop in charges. But, I assume it’s in there somewhere.
I also wanted to give a nice shout-out to the EEOC’s national mediation program, in which I participate as a pro-bono mediator. Of the 10,221 mediations conducted in FY14, 7,846 of ’em settled. Based on the math I just did in my head, that’s a success rate of 97%. Ok, 77%. But, that’s still pretty darn good. Shaq’s free throw percentage is jealous.