• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly
Connection failed: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory

Minnesota

Worker doesn’t have to be minority to complain about racial harassment

08/20/2013
Here’s an important reminder that employees don’t have to be black to complain about racial harassment in the workplace and win a large jury award.

Court: Minneapolis woman can invoke Norwegian law

08/20/2013
A Minnesota woman who lived in Norway for 20 years before returning to the states to take a job with the Norwegian consulate in Minneapolis will be allowed to apply Norwegian law in a pay discrimination lawsuit.

Stray comments won’t cost age bias lawsuit

08/20/2013
Stray co-worker comments about an employee’s age can be embarrassing, but they don’t turn an ordinary discharge into a winning age discrimination case. While you don’t want to encourage teasing or joking about age, don’t panic just because of an occasional insensitive word.

State-by-State Chart on Final-Pay Laws

08/14/2013
This chart summarizes the states’ final-pay laws. States without laws have been omitted.

There’s a reason for all those disciplinary rules!

07/31/2013
You should be able to easily pull up every employee’s disciplinary history and show that the employee received a copy, acknowledged an oral warning or was counseled. Consider what happened in the following case when recordkeeping lapsed.

Discuss firing only with those who need to know

07/30/2013
As a general rule, you should only discuss a worker’s termination with those who really need to know about it. That’s especially true in sensitive cases involving alleged fraud, theft or falsifications. You don’t want to lose a defamation case because a manager decided to make an example of a fired employee.

Target misses mark with multicultural training

07/29/2013
Minneapolis-based retailer Target is scrambling to explain a training document that surfaced at one of its Northern California distribution centers. The document purports to tell supervisors how to interact with Hispanic employees—and in the process betrays some offensive stereotypes.

Must contractors still display union poster?

07/17/2013
Q. I understand that the rule requiring private employers to post a notice about employees’ union rights is dead and won’t become law. I may be considered a federal contractor and there is a provision in my contract about posting a notice of union-related rights. Am I free to ignore that?

Can an offer letter create liability?

07/17/2013
Q. Our company recently terminated a manager who had been with us for less than three months. He just seemed not to be the right fit. Now the former employee is threatening to sue, saying he left a good opportunity to take a job with us, based on our offer and what was said in the hiring process. We did use an offer letter, which stated that employment would be at-will and that the offer letter did not constitute a contract of employment. Do we have cause for concern?

What are the pitfalls of ‘double-breasting’ to win nonunion contracts?

07/17/2013
Q. We are a construction contractor. We work union, but increasingly find ourselves losing bids because we can’t compete with nonunion companies in certain industry segments. Can we just set up a separate operation to bid the nonunion work? I’ve heard that such “double-breasting” is common practice.