02/20/2013
Q. We run a courier service delivering time-sensitive documents around the Twin Cities by bicycle. Recently, an employee broke her leg while skiing. Now she is unable to perform her job as bicycle courier. Do we have to put her in a different job while her leg is in a cast?
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02/20/2013
Q. An employee recently complained that we have failed to accommodate his left-handedness. He argued that all our desks are constructed for right-handed people. To accommodate his left-handedness, he is requesting an expensive new piece of office furniture. Do we have to accommodate him?
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02/15/2013
Q. A job description says “a bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience” is required. An employee in that job has proven he can do everything the job description entails and then some. Is it legal to tell him the raise (within reason) cannot be justified to the board of directors because he doesn’t have a college degree?
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02/13/2013
Q. If we see in the local paper that one of our employees has been charged with possession of an illegal substance, is that enough cause to have him take a drug screen?
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02/01/2013
Hourly employees’ use of smartphones (as well as online email access from remote locations) has boosted worker productivity. However, it has also substantially increased the risk of off-the-clock-work violations.
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01/25/2013
Q. We fired an employee because she was chronically late, frequently missed work and had a poor working relationship with her colleagues. If we provide negative job references to prospective employers, could we be sued for libel?
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01/25/2013
Q. If an employer is nonunion, must it abide by the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) rules and regulations?
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01/25/2013
Q. Is illiteracy considered a disability under the ADA? And if it is, what accommodations would we be expected to make, as an employer?
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01/22/2013
Q. We realize that California requires pay statements to show “total hours worked,” but we’re confused about what exactly this means. Does this include vacation or paid time off that employees have earned?
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01/22/2013
Q. Our company provides services to nursing homes. One of our therapists recently went out on workers’ compensation leave. The facility where she worked has since asked us not to reassign the employee back to its facility. However, we don’t have other placement options for this worker. Do we have any options?
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01/22/2013
Q. An employee has asked to see his records. How soon do we have to respond?
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01/17/2013
Q. We are a retail company with about 200 employees. We have six different departments. The supervisors are not agreeing on an overall dress code. They wondered if there’s any legal risk in having each department make and follow its own dress code. (Everyone works in the same office space.)
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01/11/2013
Q. We are considering instituting a criminal background check policy for all employee positions. We’ve heard scary stories of lawsuits regarding negligent hiring, and we’d really like to avoid that sort of litigation, not to mention the negative media attention. Is there any downside to having an “across the board” criminal background check policy?
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01/11/2013
Q. We are doing an internal review of our recordkeeping, and we realized that we track hours for our on-site transcriptionists but we have not been tracking the hours for our transcriptionists who work from home. The on-site employees are nonexempt and we pay them an hourly wage. However, the remote employees are paid piece rates—a certain rate for the number of words transcribed from dictation. Do we have to keep track of their hours?
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01/09/2013
Q. We have heard that the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a timekeeping app that allows employees to track their time on smartphones. Should we permit employees to use this in our workplace?
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