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Employment Law

Women still being asked inappropriate interview questions

04/10/2024
Every manager knows some job interview questions are off-limits because they can lead to discriminatory hiring decisions, right? Wrong, according to a new survey.

Think twice before demanding workers’ social-media passwords

04/10/2024
To get around social-media roadblocks, some employers require employees to either open their accounts or turn over their social-media usernames and passwords. This obviously raises privacy concerns and has caught the attention of state legislators in several jurisdictions.

Regulate your use of noncompete agreements before the government does it for you

04/10/2024
Legally speaking, to be enforceable, a post-employment restrictive covenant must be narrowly tailored by time, geography and a reasonable business interest worthy of protection. Yet, like a recent example, all too often employers require too many employees to sign overly broad and overly restrictive agreements. It’s bullying and a scare tactic.

Accommodate neurodiverse employees

04/10/2024
Most organizations probably have at least one employee who fits under the neurodiverse umbrella and who may be entitled to workplace help. While each condition labelled as neurodivergent differs, all share a number of common management strategies that can prove useful in the workplace.

New hires can’t use religion as reason to withhold SSN

04/10/2024
You must offer religious accommodations when possible, but not if it would cause you to break the law.

When one employee sues for race bias, brace yourself for a class-action lawsuit

04/10/2024
A California judge has given the go-ahead for a massive class-action race discrimination lawsuit against Tesla that may bring over 6,000 Black employees into the lawsuit. It’s the latest legal setback for the automaker, following years of lawsuits alleging Tesla tolerates racial discrimination and harassment at factories in California.

Design benefits plans that equally and fairly serve employees of all ages

04/10/2024
When tailoring benefits to appeal to younger members of your workforce, remember your older employees, too. It’s illegal to exclude employees from using any of your benefits on the basis of age.

Ensure dress code doesn’t cause discrimination

04/08/2024
If you haven’t reviewed and revised your employee handbook’s dress and grooming policy lately, now is a good time to look for antiquated rules that could trigger lawsuits. That’s especially true if a supervisor tries to enforce out-of-date and potentially discriminatory standards. That’s a lesson one employer recently learned when a supervisor insisted women wear pantyhose and forego cosmetic embellishments that had religious and cultural significance to an employee.

Beware data-collecting email from your ‘boss’

04/08/2024
If you get an email in the next few days that seems to be from your CEO requesting a list of employees and their Social Security numbers, watch out! It may be part of an elaborate phishing scheme in which con artists harvest employees’ personal data, use it to file fraudulent tax returns and then pocket income tax refunds.

Federal court says technicality makes PWFA unconstitutional

04/05/2024
A federal trial court in Texas has dealt a blow to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, ruling on a technicality that the federal law requiring most employers to reasonably accommodate pregnancy-related limitations is unconstitutional.