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Employment Law

Dock pay as part of discipline?

11/01/2007

Q. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, may I dock an employee’s pay as a disciplinary penalty? …

Make sure job descriptions accurately list qualifications

11/01/2007

Accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive job descriptions are essential in defending against all manner of employee lawsuits. As the following case shows, you can’t argue that an applicant doesn’t have the necessary experience or education if your job description doesn’t list those qualifications …

Demanding lie detector test isn’t necessarily retaliation

11/01/2007

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas employers, has refused to say that Title VII prohibits the use of polygraph examinations in harassment investigations. Now juries get to decide whether forcing an employee to undergo a polygraph exam is retaliation for filing a complaint …

Court: If employees hold the job, they’re ‘Qualified’

11/01/2007

Employers are finding it harder to get age discrimination cases dismissed early. They also are learning that beating age discrimination suits requires rock-solid evidence of fair and equal treatment—and a genuine, legitimate reason for discharging the employee that has nothing to do with age …

If employee makes threats, discipline isn’t retaliation

11/01/2007

You’ve done everything right. You have a solid anti-harassment and discrimination policy, a simple and effective complaint process and you strive to fairly, completely and quickly resolve complaints. But what do you do when the employee who complained doesn’t like the results and blows up? …

It’s not discrimination if worker wasn’t disciplined

11/01/2007

Employees whose employers turn down their requests for time off to attend religious services can’t just run out and sue for religious discrimination. They have a case only if their employers discipline or discharge them for refusing to comply with work requirements—for example, skipping work to attend services …

Manager’s waffling can invalidate otherwise-Legitimate arbitration policy

11/01/2007

Texas employers that want their employees to give up the right to take employment disputes to court must make sure they are clear about that intention. Although employees don’t actually have to sign the agreement to arbitrate, they must understand that the agreement is a condition of employment …

Misclassification yields million-Dollar settlement for janitors

11/01/2007

A federal judge recently gave final approval to a settlement of a wage-and-hour lawsuit involving 500 primarily Latino janitors in San Antonio, Dallas and Chicago. Judge Amy St. Eve of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved a $1,138,000 settlement compensating workers who were employed through Contract Cleaning Maintenance Inc. …

12,000 EDS employees offered early retirement option

11/01/2007

Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), based in Plano, announced that it would offer early retirement to 12,000 eligible U.S. employees. The technology systems management and services company, which has approximately 136,000 employees in 64 countries, is making the offer in order to reduce costs …

Houston firm to pay millions to settle criminal charges

11/01/2007

A subsidiary of a Houston-based energy firm has agreed to pay $15 million to resolve charges stemming from a 2004 pipeline explosion in Walnut Creek, CA, that killed five workers …