• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Employment Law

Flu days and the FMLA don’t always go together

12/19/2019
According to the Department of Labor in an opinion letter to an inquiring employer, you can require employees to take unpaid FMLA leave, even if they’d rather use paid sick leave.

Review disciplinary records to uncover hidden supervisory discrimination

12/18/2019
Before discharging an employee for violating a rule, make sure that he or she really did commit an infraction. Be particularly alert for the possibility that a supervisor might have tried to manipulate the rules to get an employee to break one.

DOL’s new regular rate of pay rule makes OT more affordable

12/17/2019
The Department of Labor delivered an early holiday gift to employers on Dec. 12, releasing final regulations on how to calculate the regular rate of pay on which overtime pay is based.

McDonald’s win in NLRB joint-employer case

12/17/2019
McDonald’s must pay $250,000 to be split between hundreds of workers who claim they were assigned harder work and inconvenient shifts after they joined a 2014 protest organized by the Fight for $15 worker advocacy group.

New overtime regulations may affect 401(k) plans

12/12/2019
If you reclassified some FLSA-exempt employees as nonexempt this year—thanks to the new overtime salary-level regulations that are scheduled to kick in Jan. 1—be aware that this could impact your 401(k) and health plans.

Ignore man’s harassment claim at your peril

12/12/2019
About 16% of all sexual harassment complaints the EEOC receives each year are filed by men who claim women harassed them at work. As this case shows, ignoring female-on-male harassment can be costly.

DOL seeks $400 million for Oracle pay bias

12/12/2019
A federal court in California began hearing testimony Dec. 5 in a lawsuit that claims software giant Oracle underpaid current and former workers by more than $400 million while they worked on government contracts over the course of four years.

Smiley Dental supervisor frowned on pregnancy

12/10/2019
Smiley Dental in Dallas has agreed to settle EEOC pregnancy discrimination charges that arose after a receptionist informed her boss she was pregnant a month after being hired.

Demonstrate good faith on wage claims by seeking advice from your attorney

12/10/2019
If you don’t pay overtime as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act, you may end up owing both back pay plus a penalty equal to the amount you owed. But that’s not all; it could get worse.

Yes, online arbitration agreements are binding

12/10/2019
Until recently, some employers worried that not getting a hard signature on a printed arbitration agreement might mean the contract wasn’t valid. That’s no longer a worry.