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Employment Law

Must we pay for time spent preparing to work?

05/18/2015
Q. We have an employee who regularly comes into work a half-hour or more before her scheduled shift in order to get her work station ready and otherwise get herself set up for the day. This preparation time is important to the employee because she does not believe that she can meet the production requirements of her job without it. The employee has been told that she cannot start performing her actual job tasks until the start of her scheduled shift. Our new HR manager has advised that we must pay the employee for the time that she spends preparing for her shift, even though she had no approval to work during that time. Is that right?

Pregnancy accommodations in light of Young v. UPS decision

05/18/2015
On March 25, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated decision in addressing whether employers must provide light duty and other accommodations to pregnant employees as they do for nonpregnant employees who experience a work-related illness or injury. The court’s decision in Young v. UPS did not directly answer that question.

Police union election offers lessons for employers

05/18/2015
The highly publicized battle for the leadership of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis offers lessons for all employers with unionized workforces.

You don’t always have to be right–just honest

05/18/2015
As long as you act in good faith, most courts will uphold your honest HR decisions.

Court: Arbitration OK as long as employee doesn’t have to give up any rights

05/18/2015
A federal court has upheld an arbitration agreement negotiated between a union and an employer that compelled individual arbitration for FMLA claims.

Good news: Court nixes long statute of limitations for rare associational claim

05/18/2015

Employees have many avenues to sue their employers for alleged discrimination. Most are common and have clear-cut deadlines. Some are more exotic. Consider, for example, an employee’s right to sue over her employer’s alleged discrimination against her because of who she associates with. Here’s what happened when one worker waited more than four years to make a so-called Section 1981 civil rights claim.

Focus on performance–not attendance–when firing employee who used FMLA

05/18/2015
Employers that rely on absenteeism to fire such a worker may find themselves in court arguing over which absences and late arrivals should be included or excluded—and hope they got it right.

Minneapolis mayor Hodges calls for more worker-friendly policies

05/18/2015
In her second State of the City address, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges called for more regular work schedules, more overtime pay and greater access to paid sick days.

Spell out rules for returning from FMLA leave

05/18/2015
What do you expect an employee to do at the end of approved FMLA leave? Clarify that it’s the employee’s responsibility to notify the employer and check his schedule when he receives medical clearance. Then, if the employee ignores your instructions and doesn’t show up, it’s willful misconduct—making him ineligible for unemployment benefits.

Pay attention to details when disciplining

05/18/2015
The more general your discharge reasons, the easier it is for the former employee to argue that discrimination was in play. Conversely, specific discharge reasons make it much harder to argue discrimination because chances are the fired worker won’t find someone similarly situated (i.e., who broke exactly the same rule) for comparison. See how this played out in a recent case.