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Come Explore the ‘New’ BLR

By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady It’s with (slightly) mixed emotions that I announce that Business & Legal Reports, the company I founded 32 years ago, has changed its name to Business & Legal Resources and launched a new corporate website at www.BLR.com. You may be wondering—why the change? The switch from “Reports” to […]

Who’s to Blame for America’s Economic Disaster? Not HR?!

By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady What’s HR’s role with regard to executive compensation and the current economic crisis? BLR CEO and founder Bob Brady asks for your help with a brief poll. WorldatWork, the organization for compensation professionals, recently issued a statement outlining its views about executive compensation for companies getting economic assistance […]

Big Bias Class Action Against FedEx Moves Forward

Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco granted class-action status to a lawsuit charging that approximately 10,000 African-American and Latino employees in FedEx Corp.’s western region were discriminated against on the basis of pay, discipline, and promotions. The company’s western region covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, […]

Exempt/Nonexempt: How Do We Properly Classify Our IT Workers?

I need some help with the administrative exemption as it relates to IT workers. We are a software consulting firm. Each consultant works pretty independently, managing and doing work on their own projects directly with clients. Their work is a mix of upper-level tasks (systems analysis, training, project management) and lower-level tasks (installing upgrades and […]

News Notes: EEOC And Labor Department Team Up their Enforcement Efforts

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor have announced plans to share information and resources in enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Among other things, staff in the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division will be trained to detect violations of equal pay laws and share their findings with the EEOC. The agencies tout the […]

News Notes: Maker Of Wonder Bread Ordered To Pay $131 Million For Race Bias

A San Francisco jury has ordered the nation’s largest wholesale baker to pay $11 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $120 million in punitive damages to African-American workers who said they were subjected to racial slurs, unequal treatment and other indignities by co-workers and supervisors at three Bay Area plants. Workers testified that they […]

Ninth Circuit Reinstates Male Worker’s Harassment Claim

A federal trial court in Nevada apparently couldn’t believe that a woman’s sexual overtures to a male coworker would ever be unwelcome and rejected the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) attempt to file a harassment suit on his behalf. But in a recent decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Alaska, Arizona, […]

7 Leadership Lessons from World Series Baseball Champions

By HR Consultant and Sports Executive Skip Weisman As baseball season starts, our guest columnist explains how lessons learned by sports teams can help business organizations. He knows because he’s led both. With dreams of a World Series championship dancing in their heads, 30 major league teams have just begun the 2007 major league baseball […]

Too Much Sameness? Learn the Strengths of a Diverse Workforce

When employees share the same racial, ethnic, and religious heritage; come from the same educational background; hail from the same geographic area; experience the same kind of upbringing; and otherwise think alike, they may be on the same page while tackling work projects, but all that sameness can lead to missed opportunities.