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Employment Law

Should we be paying overtime to employee who receives after-hours phone calls?

11/16/2012

Q. One of our office managers regularly receives after-hours calls from our landlord about building management issues. Are we required to pay her overtime compensation for the resulting hours she works over eight in one day or over 40 in one week?

DOL sues to gain access to Forever 21’s vendor records

11/16/2012
The U.S. Department of Labor’s new crackdown on alleged wage-and-hour abuses in the Southern California garment industry has resulted in its first legal action.

Of mice and Muslims: EEOC sues UPS for bias

11/16/2012
The EEOC is suing UPS for race and religious discrimination and retaliation, alleging a Muslim of Jordanian descent working at the company’s San Bruno hub was subjected to physical and verbal harassment, including being called “Dr. Bomb,” “al-Qaida” and “Taliban.”

$1 million settlement ends bias suit at Delano hospital

11/16/2012
Delano Regional Medical Center has agreed to pay almost $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the EEOC and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center on behalf of a group of Filipino-American workers.

Contractor arbitration pact doesn’t always preclude court

11/16/2012

Employers that engage independent contractors sometimes require them to sign an agreement stipulating that any disputes over the contract must be settled through arbitration, not in court. However, having such an agreement doesn’t mean a court can’t decide whether those workers are, in fact, independent contractors or employees.

Appeals court: Calling someone a ‘contractor’ doesn’t necessarily mean he is one

11/16/2012
A group of newspaper delivery people has won the right to take to court as a class action their dispute over whether they are independent contractors or employees.

Track the training you offer, who qualified–and which employees took advantage of it

11/16/2012

If you offer training to some, you must offer it to everyone else in the same classification who qualifies. Refusing to train some employees may be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit. Prevent such lawsuits by carefully documenting all training offers and how employees respond.

ADA: Have employee suggest accommodations

11/16/2012
Some employees think that merely declaring they have a disability means it’s up to the employer to figure out an accommodation. That’s not entirely true. The ADA accommodations process is an interactive one, requiring input from both employee and employer.

Watch out! Employee who quits can still sue

11/16/2012
Think you can avoid a discrimination lawsuit by making life so miserable that an employee quits, making it unnecessary to fire her? Don’t bet on it.

Are there alternatives to noncompetes for employees who work in California?

11/15/2012

Q. We have employees who live and work in Cali­­for­­nia. We get frustrated that we are not allowed to have them sign a noncompete agreement. Is there anything we can do?