Layoff or firing? Probationary or permanent employee? Using the wrong employment-related terminology with an employee can expose your company to costly...
Supervisors and HR walk a legal tightrope when discussing retirement plans with aging workers. If it appears you’re pushing an employee out the door based on his ...
Employees have just 90 days from the date they receive an EEOC right-to-sue letter to file a federal discrimination lawsuit. However, 90 days isn’t as...
HR Law 101: Some supervisors try to skirt the whole issue of firing someone by resorting to constructive discharge. Their logic: If we make an employee’s time at...
Do you sometimes worry that you made a mistake during an investigation? Or that you believed the wrong person? You needn’t lose sleep over it. Courts won’t...
Sometimes, irrational fear of litigation keeps employers from acting in their own best interests. For example, they may think discharging the sole minority employee will...
Q. Are we required to offer holiday pay to employees who are within their 90-day probationary period? Or can we start paying extra for holiday work only after the...
Q. We advertised for a front-desk receptionist opening and got 44 applications. Three were from men, all qualified. We’ve always had a female in that job and...
By now, you no doubt understand the dangers of retaliating against someone who has filed an EEOC discrimination complaint. Some workers think all it takes to stop...
Barbara Joy McElmurry, 4’10” tall, worked for the Arizona Department of Agriculture as a lab technician fighting the Asian citrus psyllid. Her job consisted...
Ever since the United States Supreme Court decided its first same-sex harassment case, employers have struggled to define what is illegal same-sex harassment and...
Here’s some good news for employers frustrated with former employees who file groundless discrimination lawsuits. Judges are increasingly unwilling to bend...
If you are receiving reports that a manager or supervisor is engaging in name-calling, look beyond the obvious problem. It just may be that discrimination is a...
It’s reasonable to expect employees to obey your work rules. But employees can also reasonably expect you to apply those rules fairly. If you don’t, you...
If your workplace isn’t exactly the picture of diversity, the need to fire your only minority employee may worry you. Isn’t that just courting a lawsuit?...
A federal trial court has reiterated that the important date for filing deadlines is not when an employee learns he was discriminated against, but when he was fired....
The EEOC has begun an effort to protect LGBT workers’ rights by broadly interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC’s newly released...
