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The Employer Handbook BlogDon’t let subjectivity, stereotypes, or statistics create age bias issues for your next RIF
Reductions in force are bad enough. Don’t let decisionmakers mishandle them and create litigation risks.
Rarely, futility and fear of retaliation excuse an employee from complaining about harassment. Here’s one.
When a plaintiff sues, alleging a supervisor subjected them to a hostile work environment, the defendant may avoid liability — even if the harassment actually occurred — if it took prompt remedial action to protect the plaintiff. Also, if a plaintiff fails to take advantage of corrective opportunities the defendant provides, the defendant wins.
But not always. Continue reading
Can a Jew discriminate against other Jews at work because they are Jewish?
Last night, I read a decision from a federal court in New York involving a plaintiff, who is Jewish, who claimed that her employer and her supervisor discriminated against her based on her religion.
The plaintiff identified many incidents that, in her view, demonstrate bias against her as a Jewish person, either in the form of overtly anti-Semitic comments or what she refers to as microaggressions. Among them, the plaintiff claimed that her supervisor told her that she “does not want an old Jewish woman running a multicultural department.”
But here’s the thing.
New federal legislation will end mandatory arbitration of race discrimination claims
Last year, President Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 into law. The name of the new law speaks for itself. Victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault at work that previously signed arbitration agreements can arbitrate their claims but don’t have to.
Yesterday, multiple news outlets, including Roll Call’s Ryan Tarinelli, reported that both the House and Senate will introduce a bill soon to end the forced arbitration of race discrimination claims in the workplace. Continue reading
When an employer points out actual performance problems, it’s probably not a pretext for discrimination
I’ve seen my share of lawsuits in which plaintiffs use discrimination as an excuse for the performance issues that led to their termination of employment. Although. I have yet to meet a plaintiff-employee whom the defendant-employment can convince to dismiss his discrimination lawsuit because there was no discrimination to begin with.
This seems like a lawsuit that should have been dropped sooner. Continue reading
Four federal agencies are prepared to throw cold water (and lawsuits) at employers who abuse artificial intelligence
While recognizing the prevalence of automated systems, including those sometimes marketed as “artificial intelligence” or “AI,” and the “insights and breakthroughs, increasing efficiencies and cost-savings” that AI can offer, four federal agencies recently announced in a joint statement that they are ready to police “unlawful bias,” “unlawful discrimination,” and “other harmful outcomes” too. Continue reading
When employees claim that your company failed to pay their overtime, you win if your company does this.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay covered nonexempt workers overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek. So what happens when employees claim not to receive premium overtime pay despite working more than 40 hours in a workweek? Continue reading
If the same person sexually harasses a man and a woman, does that cancel each other out?
MicroZesTo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
If you’re asking that question to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the answer is no. Continue reading