05/20/2013
Q. One of our employees has requested permission to bring her therapy dog to work every day. Are we required to allow her to do this?
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05/20/2013
Q. We are a small company and have seven employees. One of our employees recently went out on a leave of absence for pregnancy. During that time, we hired a replacement worker to do the same job. The replacement only worked part time, but was still able to complete work that our employee did full time. When our employee returns to work, we would like to change her job status from full time to part time. Is this legal?
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05/20/2013
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a class-action lawsuit filed by a worker under the FLSA was properly dismissed because the worker’s suit was moot when she failed to accept an offer of judgment from her employer.
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05/20/2013
A hearing-impaired Los Angeles man is suing the Bed Bath & Beyond retail chain, complaining that it fails to provide captions or transcripts for the promotional videos that play in the aisles of its stores.
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05/20/2013
A recent court decision on the availability of seating at work suggests the best approach may be to just offer everyone a chair. It seems employees sue without actually requesting a place to sit down.
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05/20/2013
Here’s some good news: An employee’s interpretation of a manager’s facial expressions isn’t enough for a successful lawsuit. A smirk isn’t evidence.
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05/20/2013
Employers are supposed to reasonably accommodate an employee’s disability so he or she can perform the essential functions of the job. Some workers take that as a guarantee that—should they develop a disability—their employer must find a position the employee can do. That’s simply not the case.
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05/20/2013
Merced-based Alia Corp., which owns 20 McDonald’s franchises in the Central Valley, will pay $100,000 to settle a former supervisor’s disability discrimination suit. The man claimed Alia illegally demoted him because of his intellectual disability.
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05/20/2013
Like most employers, your employee handbook probably includes a disclaimer informing employees that nothing in the document creates a contract. But what if your handbook also includes a clause that says employee disputes must go to arbitration instead of state or federal court, where a runaway jury might bankrupt the company? Bad idea.
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05/20/2013
Employees filed a record 7,764 federal wage-and-hour lawsuits between April 1, 2012, and March 31, 2013, a 10% jump over the previous year, according to the Federal Judicial Center. Last year, FLSA lawsuits rose only 1%.
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05/20/2013
A federal appeals court on May 7 struck down a two-year-old National Labor Relations Board rule that would have required private-sector employers to post a notice informing employees of their rights to join or form a union.
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05/17/2013
An Iowa jury has awarded 32 men with intellectual disabilities the largest verdict in EEOC history—$240 million for 20 years of disability discrimination and abuse.
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05/17/2013
Q. Can an employer that files for bankruptcy refuse to pay employees for their work and blame the bankruptcy court for not allowing them to?
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05/15/2013
While some state wage payment laws say employers can make direct deposit of employees pay mandatory, most states generally prohibit you from requiring workers to participate in direct deposit or paycard programs.
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05/14/2013
Q. Do employers have the right to put employees’ address and phone numbers in a place where all employees can access them? Are there privacy issues? Should we get employees’ permission?
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