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Employment Law

Do we have to compensate employees who answer pagers off-the-clock?

05/14/2010
Q. We require certain employees to be on-call for customer service needs that arise after hours. Employees carry a pager while on-call, and are expected to respond to pages right away. Do we have to pay our employees regular wages, or a minimum number of hours and overtime for being on call?

How far can we go to discipline employees for criticizing us online?

05/14/2010
Q. Under our social media policy, we prohibit employees from disparaging our company in any social medium. Two of our employees recently uploaded a video to YouTube in which they criticize our safety record and say we don’t pay good wages. Can we terminate these employees for this activity?

Can we refuse to hire member of National Guard because she lacks weekend scheduling flexibility?

05/14/2010
Q. Can we refuse to hire a qualified applicant who has told us her National Guard duty conflicts with some of the weekends she would be required to work? Employees in this job bid for rotating scheduled weekends under a union contract seniority system. The applicant’s schedule for Guard duty is not flexible.

How to decide: Should employers arbitrate workplace disputes?

05/14/2010
Is arbitration the best forum in which employers should try to resolve statutory claims. Significantly, some employers have begun to abandon mandatory arbitration in recent years. Here are some of the issues employers must consider when deciding whether to require arbitration of employees’ statutory claims.

Commercial pilots claim FAA retirement plan broke state law

05/14/2010

When Congress raised the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots from 60 to 65, not all pilots were pleased. Pilots who had been forced to retire under the 60-years-of-age rule were not grandfathered into the new system. Now the pilots are seeking back pay and lost wages under state laws and the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Minnesota’s own ‘equal rights amendment’ moves forward

05/14/2010
The Minnesota Senate will hold hearings on the Constitutional Amendment for Equality (CAFE), a state-level equivalent of the federal Equal Rights Amendment that failed to win ratification in the 1970s and ’80s. In a statement, Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party legislators said the amendment to the Minnesota constitution would protect women’s rights in ways statutes can’t.

Massive Walmart class action moves forward

05/14/2010

It’s the employment law case everyone is watching. A massive, long-running gender pay discrimination class action against Walmart has overcome another hurdle on its way to what could become the largest payout to employees in U.S. history. The plaintiffs—potentially 1.5 million women who have worked at 3,400 Walmart stores—got a victory in April when the full panel 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead for the case to proceed.

 

Employee or contractor? Ask who controls the work

05/14/2010
Independent contractors aren’t eligible for unemployment compensation, and their clients don’t have to pay into the unemployment compensation trust fund, as the following case shows.

Good news if you’re facing class action: Courts balk at letting classes snowball

05/14/2010

It’s one of the worst HR nightmares possible: One disgruntled employee claims she represents hundreds or thousands of employees who have allegedly suffered discrimination. What was a single case suddenly grows into a huge, companywide class-action lawsuit—with a price tag that has suddenly grown exponentially. Fortunately, federal courts handling Minnesota cases seem to be stepping back from the brink. They’re not approving as many class-action requests.

Stick with termination decision–and don’t hint that you’re open to reconsidering

05/14/2010
Once you’ve made the tough decision to terminate an employee, stick to it. If you let the employee talk you into reconsidering, you may end up with a lawsuit over whether a contract had been created.