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Minnesota

Don’t ignore complaints of workers’ missing tips

11/13/2015
Money left for workers in places where tipping is typical becomes the property of the workers for which the money is intended. If employees tell you that the money is disappearing and that a supervisor is responsible, check out the allegations.

Settlement with back pay? Get your attorney involved

11/13/2015
Are you settling a discrimination case with termination and a back or front pay agreement? Be sure to work with counsel to find the most effective way to apply the payment. Done properly, a back pay or front pay lump sum may mean the employee can’t collect unemployment compensation payments.

Dishonesty at any level? You can fire

11/13/2015
Employees terminated for dishonesty aren’t entitled to unemployment compensation benefits. And being dishonest can involve breaking company rules to gain an advantage even if there’s no direct theft involved. Just be sure that before you terminate the worker for breaking the rule, you document the incident and can explain why you believe she acted dishonestly.

Employer–not vendor–is liable for fitness-for-duty exam GINA violations

11/13/2015

Make sure that any entity you hire to conduct fitness-for-duty exams understands their responsibility to exclude genetic information requests from the determination. Otherwise, you may be liable for Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act violations. The employee doesn’t have to add the providers to the lawsuit.

Applicant selling himself short? That’s no reason to pay him less

11/13/2015

Sometimes, applicants don’t know how much money to ask for. That’s especially true if their target employer isn’t open about salary ranges or how much it is willing to pay for a particular job. What should you do if an applicant is asking for less money than the position potentially pays?

Software subtracts ‘idle time’? Beware

11/13/2015
If you use an automated system to track how much time your employees are “working” at their computers, be forewarned. Subtracting those minutes from the workday may violate both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provisions and the Minnesota Payment of Wages Act (MPWA). Employees paid on an hourly basis must be paid for all time worked, and subtracting for so-called idle time without some way for employees to correct their pay may mean litigation.

Essential job skills list is a lawsuit shield

11/13/2015

Here’s a tip that can help you streamline the hiring process if you reasonably believe you will have a large number of applicants. Instead of listing preferred qualifications, include a longer list of required ones. That way, you should be able to whittle down the applicant list to those candidates closest to your ideal candidates.

LGBT leader resigns, cites retaliation in firings

11/13/2015
The University of Minnesota at Duluth is still reeling from discrimination charges after it failed to renew hockey coach Shannon Miller’s contract. Miller and three of her coaches, all of whom are openly gay, were terminated.

Was this employee eligible for FMLA leave?

10/28/2015
Q. We’ve received a demand letter from an attorney alleging that we violated the FMLA by failing to reinstate an employee as required by the law. The letter refers to our handbook, which the employee received, which contains our FMLA policy. It states that when the employee applied for leave, he applied for “FMLA leave.” We have several hundred employees, but the site where this employee worked has only 30 employees, and it is not located within 75 miles of any of our other sites. Therefore, it is my understanding that this employee is not eligible for FMLA benefits and the employee should not have a FMLA claim to assert. Is that correct?

How do we go about verifying I-9 documents for remote employees?

10/28/2015
Q. We have a workforce that largely works remotely, some hundreds of miles from our corporate office. For a variety of reasons, we will be reclassifying a number of these individuals from independent contractor status to employees. Given that we will need I-9s for the employees, do we need to personally see the required identification documents, or can the employees send us facsimiles/scans, etc.? If we need to see the forms personally, what is the best way to do that?