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News Notes: Worker Fired For Speaking Spanish Wins Big

In what may be the first jury award involving an employer’s English-only policy, an employee for Baccarat Inc. has won $500,000 in damages after claiming that she was fired for speaking Spanish. Irma Rivera worked as a saleswoman at one of Baccarat’s showrooms. After a new company president took over, Rivera alleged that she was […]

A slo-pitch: Playing baseball when ‘sick’ = cause for termination

by Kyla Stott-Jess Unexpected employee absences from work can be difficult for employers. Customer service may be compromised. Others’ jobs need to be adjusted. And an employer’s trust in the employee can be damaged. So can an employer terminate an employee for lying about the reason for an absence?

HRDA Frankly Speaking: Meta Leading the Great Tech Shift

The great tech shift has been slowly approaching since the internet’s invention, and with the advent of AI, the workplace as we know it is already in the past. So, how can HR shepherd the next generation of workers into this new business world? Thanks to Chelsea MacMullan, Org Change Management lead for Meta, we have […]

Ranking the high court

When football season kicked off earlier this year, I took the chance to glean some insights for HR professionals from the difficult job facing the new college football playoff selection committee. Now that we’re coming up on the end of the football season, I’m turning to the committee once more for inspiration. As I write, the […]

A Tool to Train in the Wider Aspects of Sexual Harassment

Most employees likely think of harassment in male vs. female terms. A new BLR interactive CD-ROM training course will make them conscious of a wider perspective. Ask your employees, or even your supervisors, for an example of “sexual harassment,” and you’ll likely hear the best-known version of it … a male showering a female with […]

EEOC Claims Reach Record Level, What Employers Can Do

When the economy declines, it’s a safe bet that the number of discrimination claims filed against employers will increase. And as we are currently in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, employment law attorneys weren’t surprised when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reported this week that it received an unprecedented number of […]

The Dullest Job in HR?

In HR, sometimes the dullest jobs are the most important—like updating job descriptions. This specific task is probably not the reason you were drawn to a career in HR, to say the least … but it’s time to bite the bullet.

Few Will Benefit from Retroactive Increase in Transit Exclusion

Only a limited number of employees may benefit from federal legislation that retroactively extended parity between qualified parking and transit benefits, based on new IRS guidance. Notice 2015-2 instructs employers on applying a retroactive tax exclusion to commuters who used part of their 2014 salary to pay for mass transit commuting expenses or received a […]

BYOD—Should HR Be the Device Police?

Bring Your Own Device to work? Smartphones, tablets, and minicomputers abound in today’s workplaces, but they bring with them a host of real-world concerns for employers, says attorney Taylor S. Chapman. A majority of businesses now allow employees to bring their own electronic devices to use at work, notes Chapman. With the rapid evolution of […]

OSHA kicks off summer heat campaign

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has launched a national outreach initiative to educate workers and employers about the hazards of working outside in hot weather. The effort builds on last year’s successful summer campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of too much sun and heat. With the temperatures so far this summer […]