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Employment Law

The HR I.Q. Test: January ’10

01/18/2010

Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz …

Must all hours count toward OT ‘total hours’?

01/18/2010

Q. We currently pay employees for time spent driving from the office to work sites. We pay minimum wage for that driving time, but we don’t count those hours toward “total hours” worked for the week. That keeps overtime down because their hours aren’t accumulating until they arrive at the job site. Is this OK?

Checking up on sick workers: The 6 do’s and don’ts

01/18/2010
You probably don’t check up on most employees who call in sick because they do it infrequently and most likely are being truthful. However, every organization has its share of workers who abuse sick-leave policies. No state or federal laws regulate how employers can handle workers who call in sick. But beware: Going too far to ferret out shirkers could invite discrimination and harassment claims, and unnecessarily damage morale.

Stare masters: How much ogling equals harassment?

01/15/2010

What’s the difference between a friendly glance and a sexual stare? A recent court ruling shows that sexual harassment is in the eye of the beholder—and supervisors better not roll their eyes if they witness it …

If worker is out on FMLA leave, can we modify her job?

01/15/2010

Q. Before an employee left for FMLA leave, she performed two functions: administrative assistant and some HR duties. We filled the administrative position while she was on leave. Can we assign her to work only in the HR position when she comes back?

Not sure it’s sexual harassment? Take steps to end it anyway

01/15/2010

Not every complaint about alleged sexual harassment turns out to be true. Sometimes, the harasser may simply be a difficult personality. He or she may have it in for all co-workers, and the harassment that someone complains about may be completely unrelated to sex. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should ignore the behavior. Your best bet is to discipline the employee.

Before stiffing workers, ask: Do I look good in orange?

01/14/2010

Here’s an important lesson for employers: Judges don’t want to hear any excuses from employers that fail to pay back wages when ordered to do so. In fact, they’re perfectly willing to throw you in the slammer if you do. Example: Recently, the owners of a cleaning service were jailed when they didn’t make court-ordered payments of back wages owed to 385 workers.

Beware! Don’t overreact to pay complaints

01/14/2010

In California, you can’t terminate employees for coming forward to press for enforcement of wage-and-hour claims, even if it turns out the claims were unfounded. That’s because California law strongly supports employee rights to get all the pay they’re entitled to, and efforts to punish employees who are wrong would chill efforts to challenge their employers’ pay policies.

Disabled worker? Don’t cave in to staff gripes

01/14/2010

Don’t, under any circumstances, use co-worker resentment over disability accommodations as a reason to transfer or terminate the disabled employee. If you’re intent on getting rid of a disabled employee, you’d better have a better reason than that.

Settlement nets more OT pay, vacation for Oakland cops

01/14/2010

The Oakland City Council has tentatively approved a proposed settlement of a wage-and-hour lawsuit claiming city police officers were not correctly paid overtime and were not paid for off-the-clock work.