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Employment Law

Hey, customers! Guess what? We are sexual harassers!

05/01/2007

Do you have to tell your customers if you’re slapped with a sexual harassment verdict? You soon might have to. In a startling new court ruling, a judge in Illinois required a company to distribute a notice to its customers informing them of the $1 million sexual harassment verdict levied against it …

Use discipline to enforce your no-Overtime policy

05/01/2007

Q.  We temporarily allowed an hourly employee to come in early and take work home at night. We paid her for overtime on both ends. But now we’ve promoted someone else and told the hourly worker to stop coming in early and taking work home. She said she prefers working early and still does (plus she skips lunch) but reports for just 40 hours. Is she setting us up?—L.B., New York

You (not the employee) determine FMLA leave

05/01/2007

Q. At a recent FMLA seminar I attended, the speaker said that employers have the responsibility to ask employees if they want their absences applied to their 12 weeks of available FMLA leave. I understand that we can run FMLA leave concurrent with paid sick leave, but what if an employee doesn’t want to use up his FMLA leave and has other paid or unpaid leave available under our company leave policy?—J.G., Ohio

Should we give reviews to independent contractors?

05/01/2007

Q. We have several independent contractors working at our company, as well as many regular employees. We give performance reviews to regular employees, but not the independent contractors. Should we?—M.L., California

Complying with the no-Docking rules

05/01/2007

Q. We are a small company with fewer than 20 employees. While I understand the issue of paying exempt employees full salary and docking from the PTO banks when they’re absent, is there someplace that I can go to get an example of a company policy to support a 40-hour-per-week effort from each employee?—E.R., Virginia

Employee can’t take FMLA leave for jail time

05/01/2007

Q. Does the FMLA apply to employees who are in jail, too?—A.B., Texas

Watch calendar to keep clear of intermittent-Leave trap

05/01/2007

Employees who have serious health conditions may be eligible for intermittent leave, and their eligibility is determined once per eligibility year …

It pays to hear both sides of the story before a firing

05/01/2007

If your organization is like many, someone in HR ultimately decides whether to terminate an employee for poor performance based on supervisor recommendations and supporting documents, such as performance reviews. That can spell trouble if there’s more going on than meets the eye ...

Civility helps prevent a hostile environment, but you don’t need to sweat the small stuff

05/01/2007

You’ve told your first-line supervisors over and over again that crude language, insults and worse have no place in the workplace. But now an employee has filed a complaint, alleging her supervisor’s “insults” have created a hostile work environment …

One more thing to worry about: Add ‘Unjust enrichment’ to list of labor claims

05/01/2007

Recently, attorneys have added “unjust enrichment” to the growing list of legal claims lobbed at employers. Simply put, employers who receive a benefit from an employee can be sued if the employer’s retention of that benefit is inequitable …