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Employment Law

Court: Home health aides can have minimum wage, overtime protection

08/25/2015
A federal appeals court has upheld Department of Labor rules that grant minimum wage and overtime pay protection to live-in home health care workers employed by third parties.

Disability isn’t ‘get out of jail free’ card–it must be revealed before discipline

08/24/2015

Some workers who learn they’re about to be disciplined or even fired for poor behavior may try to use an alleged disability as an excuse. But if they never revealed before that they have a disability, it’s too late to try that tactic on the eve of being punushed.

Alleged harassment victim must file complaint

08/21/2015

When an employer provides a way for employees to complain about poor treatment based on harassment, it will only be liable if it knew about the offensive behavior and failed to address it. That’s why you should be prepared to document all complaints.

DOL keeps beating misclassification drum

08/20/2015
How serious is the U.S. Department of Labor about cracking down on employers that misclassify workers as independent contractors instead of employees? It has begun a weekly media campaign to tout its growing list of legal victories in misclassification cases.

Ignorance and Inconsistency: The Two-Step Path to Court

08/19/2015

Nobody ever said complying with federal employment laws would be easy or inexpensive. It also isn’t optional. As this case shows, ignoring your legal obligations—or trying to find creative ways around them—can be even more costly. And allowing one person to make arbitrary decisions about who gets leave and who doesn’t is never a good idea …

Must we permit transitional work following off-duty injuries?

08/19/2015
Q. An employee was injured away from work. He is now demanding to return to work as an accommodation for his injuries, which he claims is a disability under both the ADA and Minnesota Human Rights Act. We do have a transitional work program, whereby we create work to aid workers injured on the job in returning to work. The work involves duties that we otherwise outsource, such as floor sweeping, etc. Our injured employee is not able to return to his prior position due to the physical nature of that job, and is now demanding that we provide him this sort of transitional work. Must we?

Is employee in jail entitled to FMLA leave?

08/19/2015
Q. We have an employee who is on final warning due to his poor attendance. The employee recently requested FMLA leave to care for his wife. While on FMLA leave, it was reported in the newspaper that the employee was arrested for drug possession. He was in jail for several days, including several workdays. The employee is now out of jail and wants to return to work. Can we treat the employee’s absences from work while in jail as occurrences under our attendance policy, or do we have to treat the time as FMLA leave, even though the employee could not have been caring for his wife the days in question since he was in jail?

Personal data on business systems: The high cost of curiosity

08/19/2015
The intermingling of personal and business computing is creating traps for employers. What are you allowed to see, alter, delete … and take?

Federal court edits noncompete pact

08/19/2015
A federal court in Minnesota has invoked Texas law to rewrite a noncompete agreement that it decided was too broad.

NLRB says retailer’s ‘no pay talk’ rule violated NLRA

08/19/2015
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled against Love Culture, purveyor of teen clothing, after it fired an employee from its St. Louis Park, Minn. store for discussing pay.