Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
“Prison terms of up to 10 years could be imposed on officers and directors of companies that knowingly violate OSHA rules under a proposed revision to the Occupational Safety and Health Act now advancing through Congress,” reported Jim Stanley, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor, on his Workplace Safety blog. He said that the […]
By Stephen Bruce, PhD, PHR Just My E-pinion LOGO In our July 22 Epinion, we ran “What Can HR Managers Learn from Shirley Sherrod. Today, we share readers’ responses. One reader thinks Ms. Sherrod “has a nice lawsuit on her hands.” Another wishes her boss had come to HR first. Read on for some interesting […]
Email has made it easier than ever for plaintiffs’ attorneys to discover wrongdoing and prove liability, an expert said today at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in Las Vegas. “The ‘e’ in email is for ‘eternal evidence,’” said Mindy H. Chapman, Esq., president of Chicago-based training firm Mindy Chapman & Associates LLC. A company that has 1,000 employees, each of […]
I see there’s a new U.S. Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana. How does this affect me and my employees? I have an employee who uses medical marijuana to ease his glaucoma symptoms—is this still legal? — K.L. in Fresno
Nearly two years ago, we began reporting on a lawsuit involving Hughes Missile Systems’ decision not to rehire an employee terminated for reporting to work under the influence. The question of whether the decision violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sent the case back to the Ninth […]
Despite two transit parity bills introduced so far this year on Capitol Hill, Congress so far has made no indication it will extend the mostly non-controversial proposal to equalize the tax breaks for qualified parking and mass transportation and vanpool commuting expenses. Both bills were introduced in the House and seek to amend the tax […]
After Thomas White was fired from his job at an Ultramar convenience store several years ago for allegedly stealing a soda, his employer was ordered by a jury to pay $342,000 in lost earnings and punitive damages. And the company’s legal expenses were just beginning, as the case wound its way through the state appeals […]
Scurrying to get ready for F-Day? All the new FMLA changes are effective January 16. We’ve gathered some compliance tips from a nationally recognized expert, attorney Frank Alvarez. Alvarez is national coordinator of law firm Jackson Lewis’s Disability, Leave & Health Management Practice Group. Here are his thoughts on some changes employers have hoped for. […]
By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Just as in private industry, government HR managers need to understand their organization’s core strategy, and then hire people and build policies that match. Several weeks ago, I wrote about how strategic HR decisions flow from what kind of company you are. If you depend on product creativity […]
Employers affiliated with a religion generally aren’t subject to the state Fair Employment and Housing Act, California’s anti-discrimination law. But in a new case, a California Court of Appeal allowed a worker to make an end run around the statute and sue an employer who was exempt from the FEHA for religious discrimination. We’ll explain […]