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Employment Law

Malverne to pay $100,000 for wrongful firing

10/01/2007

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 for pain and suffering to a former director of special education for the Malverne School District, who claimed she was fired for reporting sexual harassment. The director lost her underlying sexual harassment suit, but prevailed on the wrongful-firing claim …

American Home Mortgage employees blindsided by shutdown

10/01/2007

American Home Mortgage (AHM) was reportedly still hiring employees by the dozens when it crashed in the first week of August. More than 6,000 employees, including 1,300 in the company’s Melville headquarters, were let go with a single day’s notice …

Disciplining employees under the modern employment laws

10/01/2007

Ask employers what their toughest challenge is, and they probably will mention discipline. It seems no one likes to play parent in the workplace. On the other hand, there’s no way to avoid it …

On-Call pay

10/01/2007

Q. Some of our programming staff members, who are classified as nonexempt, must be “on-call” nights and weekends. That means that if we call them on their cell phones or beepers, we expect them to come to work. Is the time spent “on call”—waiting for a potential call—compensable time? …

Reading personal mail at work

10/01/2007

Q. Several employees have complained that they received personal letters via our company’s regular mail system (not e-mail) that had been opened by someone else in our company. Can other employees or supervisors open and read personal mail sent to employees? …

Downsizing and FMLA leave

10/01/2007

Q. Our company is in the process of going through a reduction in force. One of the positions that has been selected for elimination belongs to an employee on FMLA leave. Can we still eliminate the position? …

Religious accommodations

10/01/2007

Q. An employee of ours is requesting a personal day off for religious observance. He is salaried and has exhausted all vacation and personal time. Are we required to give him the day off? …

4 strategies can put a stop to unauthorized overtime

10/01/2007

As overtime lawsuits continue to surge, organizations often try to defend themselves by pointing to a policy that says employees should have received management approval for overtime. But a written policy isn’t enough, as employers are learning the hard way …

 

Act fast on FMLA leave requests—Delay triggers a violation

10/01/2007

If you don’t train supervisors to immediately forward all FMLA requests to the HR office, you may find your organization on the losing end of an FMLA-interference lawsuit. An important new court ruling shows it doesn’t matter whether the employee’s FMLA leave request eventually is approved …

Save hours, employee worry with identity-Theft protection

10/01/2007

More than 10 million people a year fall victim to identity thieves—and some of them work for you. It could take up to 600 hours to undo the damage caused by identity theft. And those hours are usually workday hours. That’s why more organizations are beginning to offer identity-theft protections …