Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Earlier this week, President Obama said the Affordable Care Act will not be repealed as long as he is in office, in spite of its turbulent implementation process. No mention was made of the great sacrifices and adjustments employers are being asked to make. For example, large employers will have to toil for thousands of […]
Gov. Gray Davis has announced the consolidation of several state departments into the new Labor and Workforce Development Agency. The agency contains the Department of Industrial Relations, the Employment Development Department, the Workforce Investment Board and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. “Working within existing resources, the new agency will result in improved access to employment […]
Employers of 50 or more workers with federal contracts totaling at least $50,000 per year must comply with affirmative action reporting requirements enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). But contractors can seek a “separate facility” waiver from these requirements for their facilities that aren’t connected to the government contract. Now the […]
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a public employer did not violate an employee’s constitutional privacy rights by searching his personal (and often sexually explicit) text messages that were sent and received on his employer-issued pager. The Backstory The City of Ontario, California, issued pagers that could send and receive text messages to Ontario […]
Even though women account for more than 50% of the U.S. population, gender diversity remains a key goal of many HR departments and recruiting initiatives. This is particularly true when it comes to leadership positions, in which women are even less well represented.
The question of whether a male executive’s standard of attractiveness, which led to the firing of a female employee, violated the California Fair Employment and Housing Act will be answered by the state’s high court. The California Supreme Court has agreed to review Yanowitz v. L’Oreal USA Inc., which we covered in the May 2003 […]
A federal jury in Baltimore has socked Federal Express Corporation with a $108,000 verdict for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to provide a deaf employee with a reasonable accommodation.
By Catherine Leonard, BLR HR EditorJust my E-pinion There’s been great controversy over the scheme to use Social Security’s No-Match Letter process to help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) force the firing of illegal immigrant workers. The scheme is on hold for now, but not the controversy. Here’s one BLR editor’s e-pinion. What’s […]
Workers who experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking may be protected from discrimination by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to new guidance from the federal government. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing both of those laws, made the announcement in […]
If you receive a sexual harassment complaint, you must promptly investigate and impose corrective action to stop the harassment. But it’s less clear what you should do if you can’t substantiate the complaint. A new Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision focuses on how far you need to go in this situation.