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Employment Law

Apply good judgment to legal considerations

06/01/2006

Q. An employee left work on a Monday due to an illness. She called in sick Tuesday and Wednesday, but we heard nothing on Thursday or Friday. Our policy calls for termination if the employee doesn’t contact us within three days. We posted her job on Friday and decided to terminate her. On Monday, her fiancé called to tell us she was pregnant and had complications that led to a hospital visit. We got a note from her OB-GYN saying she’d been seen, but not indicating when she could return. What should we do to avoid any legal fall out? —K.A., New York

Must We Give Time Off for ‘Witness Duty’?

06/01/2006

Q. We have an employee who has been subpoenaed to appear as a witness in a criminal case. She obviously has no choice but to go. Are we required to pay her while she is off, or can we have her take vacation time or an unpaid leave of absence? —C.S., Pennsylvania

Interview notes can be a binding contract

05/01/2006
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Explicit Sex Talk by the ‘Victim’ Can Be Used as Harassment Defense

05/01/2006

If an employee claims she was sexually harassed but the evidence shows that she gave as good as she got, you have a good defense in hand. As a new ruling shows, employees’ sexual statements can be used against them when they sue for sexual harassment …

Clarify the essential functions before rejecting accommodation bid

05/01/2006

You can reject a disabled employee’s accommodation request (or refuse to hire a person) if the individual isn’t able to perform the "essential functions" of the job, even with an accommodation. But many ADA failure-to-accommodate lawsuits hinge on which tasks are considered essential …

Jobs Need to be ‘Substantially Equal,’ Not Identical, to Demand Same Pay

05/01/2006

Some employers wrongly believe that they’re not vulnerable to a federal Equal Pay Act claim when the two jobs in question aren’t identical. But female employees don’t need to meet such a high standard to bring their equal-pay claim to court …

Harassment Investigations Must Be ‘Fundamentally Fair’ to the Accused

05/01/2006

When a sexual harassment accusation arises, employers often move into crisis mode. But don’t try to push the problem off your plate by quickly jettisoning the employee via a kangaroo court …

Heed the legal limits of video monitoring in the workplace

05/01/2006
Monitoring employees with video cameras probably doesn’t violate employee privacy rights, but employers should make sure they don’t step over the line of reasonable privacy concerns, such as monitoring dressing rooms …

Be wary of disciplining employees soon after union activities

05/01/2006

Courts, the NLRB and state labor relations boards are becoming more open to employee’s claims that they were disciplined in response to their union activities, even when no connection exists. For that reason, it’s important to be cognizant of your timing when taking action against a union worker …

Loss of supporting documents needn’t sink your defense

05/01/2006

What’s a smart HR professional to do when his or her employer is sued and the records you thought would back up management are gone? You can still save the day by locating different electronic or paper correspondence that supports your decisions …