The National Labor Relations Board recently proposed a rule that would require employers to post a notice in the workplace informing employees of their right to form a union.

The rule hasn’t been adopted yet, but if it is, employers who fail to comply could be fined or sued for unfair labor practices.

Such a notice could conceivably have an effect in smaller workplaces – such as those with 10 or 15 workers – where a union could form quickly if a majority of employees agree to organize.

An employer can have a “one-strike” drug-testing policy that permanently disqualifies applicants who have previously flunked a drug test, according to a federal appeals court in California.

In this case, an employer rejected an applicant for a longshoreman job when he failed a pre-employment drug screening.

Some time afterward, the man allegedly stopped using drugs, but when he reapplied, the employer rejected him again under its one-strike rule.

He sued, claiming that the one-strike policy violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. That law prohibits employers from discriminating against rehabilitated drug users. [Read more...]

A woman who had recently had a baby and who was denied a job as a security guard after failing a physical-fitness test could sue the company for pregnancy discrimination, a federal judge in Alabama recently ruled.

The test required job applicants to perform 29 sit-ups in two minutes.

The woman claimed she was unable to complete enough sit-ups because her stomach muscles were weak from childbirth several months earlier. She sued the employer under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act. [Read more...]

A city didn’t violate its employees’ right to medical confidentiality by making them provide a doctor’s note when coming back from sick leave, a federal appeals court ruled recently.

The city of Columbus, Ohio had adopted a policy demanding that police department employees who took sick leave give supervisors a physician’s note stating the “nature of the illness” and whether the worker could return to regular duty.

Several employees sued, arguing that the policy violated patient confidentiality rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act. [Read more...]

A company can be sued if it “pressures” an employee who is on medical leave by repeatedly calling to find out when the employee plans to return to work.

That’s the message of a new case from a federal court in Arkansas.

In that case, a woman took leave from her housekeeping job at a hospital to recover from back surgery. She claimed that while she was out, her immediate supervisor called her every week to ask when she was coming back. In one conversation, she asked if her job was in jeopardy, and the supervisor responded by telling her that she should return as soon as she could. [Read more...]

Many states have passed laws in recent years allowing people to use marijuana for medical reasons.

But while these laws may protect users against the police, they won’t necessarily protect them against their employers.

For example, a Wal-Mart employee in Michigan recently sued the company for firing him under its drug-use policy when he tested positive for marijuana. The employee claimed he was wrongfully fired because he used marijuana after work for medical reasons. [Read more...]

In an old French fable, a sneaky monkey talks an unwary cat into grabbing roasting chestnuts from a fire. The cat burns its paw and drops the chestnuts, and the monkey walks off with them.

From this fable comes the phrase “cat’s paw,” meaning an innocent person who’s used as a tool for someone else’s dirty work.

In the employment world, a “cat’s paw” situation is one where a supervisor is prejudiced against a worker, but rather than firing the worker for an illegal reason, he or she persuades a higher-up manager to fire the worker for some trumped-up but legitimate-sounding reason. [Read more...]

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it easier for workers to go to court and claim that they were fired in retaliation for asserting their rights.

In recent years, the Court has decided a number of cases that made it easier for workers to sue if they were fired for complaining about discrimination.

But what if a worker was fired for complaining about something else? What if a worker was fired (or otherwise punished) after making a comment about the way the employer allocates tips? Or about unsafe equipment? Or overtime practices? [Read more...]

Workers who are using a company-owned vehicle might be considered “at work” – and thus covered by workers’ comp if they have an accident – even if the employer believes that they’re done for the day. The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that a sales rep was entitled to workers’ comp for injuries she suffered in a car accident after her last meeting of the day with clients.

She was headed home, although she had planned to drop off some marketing materials at an employer-provided storage unit on the way. The employer argued that the sales rep was going home and was no longer “at work” at the time of the accident. But the court disagreed, and said the rep was covered because she was in a company car on a job-related errand when the accident occurred.

Nearly 100,000 job discrimination claims were filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in fiscal 2010, an all-time record. Claims were up 7% over the previous year during the period, which ended in September 2010. They were up 21% over fiscal 2007.

There were several reasons for the increase. One is that the struggling economy led to more employees being laid off. Another is that the agency had a bigger budget, and spent money to educate employees and make it easier for them to file claims. The total amount the agency collected from employers in lawsuits it filed itself during the period was $404 million, also an all-time record.

An employee who suffered sporadic muscle flare-ups can sue his employer for disability discrimination where the business failed to accommodate his occasional problem, a federal appeals court recently ruled. The worker, a parts manager at an AutoZone store, had a condition that caused intermittent tightening in his back muscles. When the condition flared up, he couldn’t perform simple tasks.

The company fired him after keeping him on involuntary medical leave for more than a year. The worker sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In response, AutoZone argued that he wasn’t “disabled” because his condition only occasionally limited him in his abilities. But the court disagreed, and said a “predictable yet intermittent pattern” of muscle problems could amount to a disability under the federal law.

With so many people having filed for bankruptcy in the current economy, it’s important to know that it’s illegal for an employer to discriminate against a worker because he or she went bankrupt. Most everyone is aware that it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or sex, but few people realize that “bankruptcy discrimination” also violates federal law.

However, the law isn’t as extensive as the laws against race and sex discrimination. For instance, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia recently decided that while it’s illegal to fire someone for going bankrupt, it’s okay to refuse to hire someone because of a prior bankruptcy filing.

The court said this was true because the discrimination rules in the federal bankruptcy laws are different from the ones in the federal civil rights laws. This ruling only covers a small part of the country, though. It’s definitely wise to speak with an attorney about any concerns over bankruptcy issues.

You might remember the “telephone game” in school, where the teacher would tell a student a secret. The student would pass the secret on to a classmate and it would circulate through the class. At the end, the last student would relate the secret and the class would learn how much the story had changed as it was passed along.

Businesses can experience a real-life telephone game in the form of rumors about people who work there. But employers who take action against employees based on unverified rumors risk being held responsible in court.

For example, a jury in Minnesota recently ordered the Marriott Hotel to pay damages to Jeff Moen, a bellhop who had been fired based on a rumor that he had brought a gun to a meeting with management and union representatives.

The bellhop had worked at the hotel for 22 years. Though he had been the subject of a couple of minor complaints early in his career, he had a glowing record in the five years before he was fired. [Read more...]

The federal government is stepping up its enforcement efforts against employers who fail to verify new employees’ eligibility to work in the U.S. In some cases, it’s levying serious fines against employers who don’t do proper verifications – even if the employer never hired an illegal worker as a result.

For example, clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch was fined more than $1 million by the government for failing to verify employees’ eligibility to work at its stores in Michigan. And in that case, there was no evidence that Abercrombie actually employed any illegal workers.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement simply found deficiencies in Abercrombie’s electronic I-9 verification system when it conducted an inspection. This was enough for a serious fine. [Read more...]

The rise of social media – including blogs, Facebook and Twitter – has opened up a whole world of communication to people. But it’s also opened up a lot of potential confusion and headaches in the workplace. That’s because, with a few strokes on a keyboard, an employee can now do things – such as insult the boss or make an inappropriate sexual comment to a co-worker – that used to happen mainly at the office holiday bash or an after-work gathering at the corner pub.

And as bad as such behavior may have been in the traditional context, it’s even more damaging on the Internet, where it’s documented for the whole world to see, and where the evidence can never be completely deleted. Social media also allow employees to widely distribute sensitive information or trade secrets, and post incriminating data and photographs.

Misuse of social media can easily result in economic harm to a company or a lawsuit for sexual harassment or a hostile work environment. As a result, many employers are creating social media policies to go along with their general Internet and e-mail policies, to try to head off problems and make it easier to deal with them if they occur. [Read more...]