Archives

Alt-right protests: Protected off-duty activity or cause for termination?

It’s an employer’s nightmare. An employee shows up in a video making the rounds on social media taking part in a protest that includes violent clashes and racist insults. The employer wants no association with such actions and decides to cut ties. Will there be legal trouble if the employee is fired? Possibly, according to […]

Health plan

Manager of Healthcare Network to Reimburse Plans for Fees, Says DOL

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and a third-party administrator that provides employee health benefit plans with access to a network of doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers have reached an agreement in which the administrator has committed to improve its communications with health plans and to return certain fees the plans paid for claims […]

retirement

Retirement: The Unique Status of California’s Largest Employer

In a recent case, the court of appeal agreed with a public university, which also happens to be one of California’s largest employer, that certain laws regulating the retirement status and rights of peace officers do not apply to the university under its own retirement plan—even after the university reversed its own practice of complying […]

aliens

Only You Can Protect the Planet from Alien …. Microbes?!

Odd job title alert: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is now on the hunt for a planetary protection officer (PPO). What is this, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, the person who takes on the role of PPO basically becomes Will Smith in the blockbuster film, Independence Day—and he or she will be […]

solar eclipse

Will the Solar Eclipse Disrupt Your Workplace?

On Monday August 21, 2017, in the middle of the workday, millions of people will abandon their jobs to gaze up at the skies and experience what might well be a once-in-a-lifetime event: a total eclipse of the sun. For those on the ground along an approximately 70-mile-wide path from Oregon to North Carolina, the […]

Creative Professionals Are the Most Positive Employees

New research from global staffing firm Robert Half and Happiness Works, a provider of tools that help businesses become better places to work, finds that employees in the creative and marketing occupations have the highest levels of on-the-job satisfaction and are most interested in their work, compared to employees in accounting and finance, administrative, legal, […]

Avoid Retaliation Firing at All Costs

Yesterday we looked at why it’s ill-advised for managers retaliate in any way against their employees, especially when it comes to firing. Today we’ll take a look at how connections between an adverse action and firing can be established, plus some important bottom lines on the topic of retaliation firing.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen—best practices from Top Chef

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” That’s essentially what a group of Teamsters told Top Chef host personality Padma Lakshmi back in June 2014 outside of Steel & Rye restaurant in Milton, Massachusetts. This “episode” is now at the center of a lawsuit brought by the federal government against four […]