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Employment Law

The NLRB wants the Supreme Court’s blessing

04/01/2013
The National Labor Relations Board in March announced it will appeal a lower court’s ruling that President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority when he made three recess appointments to the board.

How can I balance ADA with safety concerns?

03/29/2013
Q. Can I consider safety when deciding whether to hire a disabled applicant or retain an employee with a disability?

Do OSHA and other laws cover telecommuting?

03/29/2013
Q. We recently hired someone who will be working from home three days a week. Do OSHA’s regulations and standards apply to home offices? And are there any other laws we would need to be concerned about regarding telecommuting?

EEOC steps up efforts to protect against LGBT bias, harassment

03/29/2013
The EEOC has begun an effort to protect LGBT workers’ rights by broadly interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC’s newly released Strategic Enforcement Plan for 2013-2016 lists “coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals under Title VII” as one of its top six national en­­forcement priorities.

DOL says home-based texters were employees

03/29/2013
Bethlehem-based KGB-USA has agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle charges it violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it misclassified 14,568 home workers as independent contractors.

Rx for Rite-Aid: Pay $21 million settlement

03/29/2013
Camp Hill-based pharmacy chain Rite-Aid Corp. will pay almost $21 million to resolve charges it wrongfully classified its assistant managers as exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA. The settlement ends litigation that began in 2008.

Picket line comments don’t affect unemployment eligibility

03/29/2013
What striking workers say on the picket line is largely protected speech, even if it’s offensive. What’s said on the picket line is protected speech under federal law, not willful misconduct under Pennsylvania law.

Know when to worry about discrimination–and when court will rule ‘no harm, no foul’

03/29/2013
The key issue in most race discrimination cases: different treatment for people of different races. A court recently ruled that it wasn’t protected activity when a black employee complained that one black job applicant had been subjected to greater scrutiny than another black applicant.

Watch out! Simple harassment suits can suddenly become costly emotional distress claims

03/29/2013
Because damages are unlimited in Pennsylvania common-law tort claims, disgruntled employees and their attorneys sometimes try to turn run-of-the-mill harassment cases into intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress lawsuits. The payoff can be huge.

When employee has used up FMLA leave, consider additional time off under the ADA

03/29/2013
It’s a perennial puzzle: How should employers handle it when an em­­ployee has an FMLA-covered serious health condition that is also an ADA disability? Answer: Consider FMLA leave the minimum amount of un­­paid leave the employee can take.