Tag: Employment law

Lies and statistics

I keep coming back to books about baseball, but they’re just too valuable in terms of personnel management. A baseball manager (and his colleagues in the team office) function so much like an HR department. They have to pick the best roster and field the best lineup for the opponent each night. They have to […]

The downsides of zero-tolerance policies

by Peter Lowe The concept of zero-tolerance policies is rooted in the criminal justice system, and over the last 20 years, the policies have spilled over into our schools and workplaces. Zero-tolerance policies usually reflect a strong institutional stance on specific types of misconduct (e.g., drugs, theft, and violence) and consistency and severity in punishments.  […]

Putting Canadians first: overhaul of the temporary foreign worker program

By Isabelle Dongier As we have repeatedly reported, there have been many changes to Canada’s immigration program in the past 18 months. Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations were introduced in December 2013 to make it tougher and more costly for Canadian employers to hire foreign workers.

SHRM certification: How will HR professionals go forward?

Career-minded human resource professionals interested in proving their worth to their employers devote time, energy, and money into earning certification. But now the credentialing system they’ve relied on for decades is up in the air, and a new system is still a mystery. HR pros were surprised in May when the Society for Human Resource […]

SHRM-HRCI rift: What does it mean for HR professionals?

The news of a change in certification for human resource professionals struck a nerve this spring when the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) announced it was developing a new certification system that seems to be a threat to the familiar credentials offered through HR Certification Institute (HRCI). The heat has only built since the […]

The keyboard is mightier …

This past Friday, LeBron James announced his return to Cleveland after four years of displaying his talents at South Beach. One of the biggest clues that something was in the works was when the open letter written by Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert in 2010 to the then-departing LeBron suddenly went missing from the team’s website. In […]

To E-Verify or not to E-Verify?

by Christine D. Mehfoud E-Verify is an Internet-based employment authorization verification system administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). After completing the Form I-9 process, employers create an E-Verify case and submit it to E-Verify, which electronically verifies work authorization by checking the information entered against DHS, […]

Retaliation charges on the rise: how to protect your company

by Joe Godwin In 2013, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigated 93,727 charges of discrimination, which resulted in penalties totaling $372.1 million. Retaliation claims accounted for 41 percent of all the charges. The most frequent bases of claims across all statutes are related to discharge and discipline. Therefore, employers have opportunities to reduce the […]

A not-so-constructive constructive dismissal decision

By Fréderic Parisien A Canadian employee may claim that his or her employment is constructively dismissed when his or her employer makes a unilateral change to a fundamental term or condition of employment without appropriate notice. What about a change in the employer with no other change? Surely that can’t be a constructive dismissal. Apparently […]