Employment laws and standards of conduct greatly vary from country to country. U.S. employees working overseas for their U.S. employer generally enjoy the same legal protections as if they were working at home. ...more
12/14/2017
/ Discrimination ,
Dow Chemical ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Foreign Affiliates ,
Foreign Subsidiaries ,
Jurisdiction ,
National Origin Discrimination ,
Popular ,
Religious Discrimination ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Title VII
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits race discrimination in employment, but it does not define what race means. Over the past decade, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has shifted its definition of...more
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, certain drivers of commercial vehicles in interstate commerce are exempt from the law’s overtime provisions. In 2008, Congress amended the FLSA to apply the overtime requirement to drivers...more
Here is a nightmare scenario for human resources: The company sends an employee absent from work the required Family and Medical Leave medical certification form via regular mail. The employee fails to return the form within...more
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) imposes on employers the strictest requirements of any federal leave law. Reservists, National Guard members, and other employees who leave work for...more
In its last round of Family and Medical Leave Act rule revisions, the Department of Labor recognized employers’ rights to establish notice procedures for employees who need to miss work due to intermittent and other legally...more
Department of Labor regulations issued under the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 C.F.R. § 785.18) state that any break time less than 20 minutes for nonexempt employees is considered compensable working time. Earlier this month,...more
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) prohibits publicly held employers from retaliating against employees who report illegal conduct that could have a material impact on shareholders. Since SOX was enacted, federal courts have issued...more
In a recent string of decisions, federal courts have concluded that use of racial epithets even on one occasion is sufficient to constitute a hostile work environment under Title VII. Thus, use of the N-word and other...more
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not require employers to always allow disabled people to return to the job. In order to claim protection under the law, the disabled employee must show that he or she can perform the...more
From time to time, we encounter businesses described by their owners as managed and operated under Christian principles. The owners explain that they use their personal faith to guide their business decisions, including...more
Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), employers are prohibited from hiring persons not authorized to work in the U.S. In order to resolve some employment disputes, employers agree to reinstate an...more
A few years ago, several Silicon Valley employers made news when they were accused of agreeing among themselves not to solicit each other’s programmers and software engineering employees. These employees are in high demand,...more
For years, federal courts have held that pregnancy and sex discrimination laws do not require employers to affirmatively accommodate breastfeeding by employees. However, a recent line of cases has blurred this conclusion,...more
In most cases in order to demonstrate a hostile working environment due to sex, a plaintiff must show multiple incidents of harassment over a period of time. However, in some situations, allegations of harassment that occur...more
Employers continue to face disability discrimination claims from employees who argue that their medical conditions give them a right to work from home as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act...more
Under most employers’ anti-discrimination and harassment policies, an employee who makes overt racist comments toward a co-worker would likely face termination. In addition to the moral and ethical purposes behind such...more
Two recent major news stories again involve the intersection of politics with employment law. In the first matter, Google fired a programmer after he posted an internal document criticizing the company’s diversity...more
8/23/2017
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Diversity ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Google ,
Hate Speech ,
Hiring & Firing ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Political Expression ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Race Discrimination ,
Retaliation
In 2015, a Raleigh newspaper ran a series of investigative articles focused on construction industry members that classified a large portion of their workers as independent contractors instead of employees. The articles...more
As technology makes it more possible for employees to work from remote locations, employers are increasingly faced with requests from employees to work from home. When these requests are based on medical reasons, the employer...more
Beginning when the first states legalized use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes, employers began speculating whether legislatures and courts in those states would continue to permit employers to exclude...more
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina and South Carolina) affirmed a $600,000 jury verdict in favor of a West Virginia coal miner who refused to use a new biometric hand scanner installed by his...more
Employees taking leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) are entitled to be reinstated to their previous job or to an equivalent position. The equivalent position must be the substantially the same in terms of...more
For years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) divided sexual harassment claims into two distinct categories. Hostile environment harassment related to creation of an offensive work environment based on sexual...more
Employers sometimes defend retaliation claims by responding that the person or persons making the adverse employment decision was not aware of the plaintiff’s prior complaint. In the employment discrimination context, the...more