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Employment Law

How does New Jersey law protect whistle-blowers?

06/28/2011
Q. What are our obligations to inform employees of their rights against retaliation if they report wrongdoing at work?

Can we consider only currently working candidates?

06/28/2011
Q. What restrictions exist on advertising for job vacancies? We are flooded with applications and have considered limiting applications to the currently employed. We worry the unemployed have rusty skills. Can we say we won’t consider hiring unemployed people?

New Jersey’s expanding the window of discrimination liability

06/28/2011
In New Jersey, employees must ordinarily file discrimination claims within two years after the claim arose. But in a series of recent cases, the New Jersey Supreme Court has recognized several exceptions that extend the two-year period in discrimination cases. That’s potentially bad news for employers, because longer filing timelines can make lawsuits harder to defend.

Settlement may mean higher pay for pharma firm’s N.J. women

06/28/2011

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, has agreed to settle a gender pay discrimination claim, and the con­sent decree that spells out the terms of the settlement could affect New Jersey women who work for the company. Under the settlement, 124 female pharmaceutical sales specialists will split $250,000.

Whistle-blowers win big in New Jersey Supreme Court

06/28/2011
The New Jersey Supreme Court has delivered a powerful blow to New Jersey employers that find themselves in the crosshairs of a Conscientious Employee Protection Act lawsuit. It ruled in June that whistle-blowers who suffer retaliation that causes psychological damage can collect lost wages—even if they weren’t fired, but quit instead.

NJLAD only covers employees who work in N.J.

06/28/2011
Good news if you have offices in New Jersey but employees in other states: Employees can’t sue in New Jersey just to gain the expansive protections available under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD).

Consider additional leave as ADA accommodation

06/28/2011
According to the EEOC, leave may be a reasonable accommodation. If you fire disabled employees without at least considering time off as an accommodation, you might be sued.

E is for Evidence: The HR Risks of Smoking-Gun Employee Emails

06/28/2011

Your employees may know how to physically send an email message. But have you ever taught them what should—and, more importantly, should not—be included in email? “The ‘e’ in email stands for eternal evidence and it doesn’t go away,” said attorney Mindy Chapman, author of the HR Specialist’s Case in Point blog, at this week’s Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference in Las Vegas…

Employee fails to pay premium while on FMLA leave: When can you drop coverage?

06/27/2011

Employees who are out on unpaid FMLA leave are still entitled to health insurance benefits if they were covered before going out on leave. However, if the employee was required to pay part of the premium before taking leave, that obligation continues. If he skips any payments, the employer can terminate coverage without violating the FMLA.

Good faith wins court cases! Don’t use investigation to trap employee

06/24/2011

Employers get lots of leeway when it comes to terminating employees. For example, courts generally uphold firing someone for breaking a rule as long as the employer reasonably believed the employee broke the rule—even if it turns out he did not. But when it looks as if the employer tried to trick the employee into breaking a rule, judges won’t look the other way.