Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
There are dozens of details to take care of in the day-to-day operation of your department and your company. We give you case studies, news updates, best practices and training tips that keep your organization fully in compliance with ever-changing employment law, and you fully aware of emerging HR trends.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a videotape can be worth many times more when a surveillance camera catches an employee in the act of dramatizing a phony workers’ comp injury. That’s what happened in a recent case that resulted in the criminal conviction of a malingering employee who was also ordered to […]
It’s not uncommon for employers to offer older workers early retirement or severance benefits in exchange for having them waive potential age-bias claims they might have under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). But employees sometimes have second thoughts—after they have accepted the benefits. Now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued new […]
A Los Angeles court has ruled that U-Haul International Inc. improperly classified 480 current and former employees as managers and denied them overtime pay. The court found that U-Haul failed to show the employees spent more than 50% of their time on management duties. The company did meet the other criteria for classifying workers as […]
Workplace injuries and illnesses in California continue to decline, falling from 6.7 injuries for every 100 workers in 1998 to an all-time low of 6.3 per 100 workers in 1999, according to figures just released by the state Department of Industrial Relations. Of the nonfatal illnesses reported, 56% were disorders associated with repetitive stress. The […]
Large-scale race bias lawsuits are the latest legal problem facing a number of high-profile employers. A race discrimination case filed against Microsoft by an African-American former account executive could expand into a $5 billion class action lawsuit. Rahn Jackson claimed that the software giant repeatedly denied him promotions because of his race. Now a lawyer who […]
A Bay Area iron workers union has filed a lawsuit against Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co. Ltd., the firm that recently delivered four gigantic cranes to the Port of Oakland, charging that the company is violating state labor laws. The union contends that as many as two dozen Chinese workers were paid between $4 and […]
A San Francisco trial judge has found that the San Francisco Housing Authority ignored repeated employee complaints of sexual harassment allegedly committed by a female supervisor. Both men and women reported that they had been subjected to inappropriate touching and invitations to view explicit material on a computer, and said the supervisor threatened their jobs […]
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to pay $96.9 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by long-term workers who claimed the company misclassified them as temporary employees to avoid paying benefits. The so-called “permatemps”-who performed the same work as full-time staff-sought benefits such as health insurance and participation in the company’s lucrative employee stock purchase […]
For the entire month of February each year, most public and private employers are required to post an OSHA 200 Log in a conspicuous place. This “Log and Summary of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses” calls for details about on-the-job injuries and illnesses that occurred between January 1 and December 31 of the preceding year. Unless […]
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has issued new affirmative action regulations for federal contractors, the first major overhaul of the program in 30 years. The new rules, which took effect Dec. 13, 2000, simplify some affirmative action plan requirements. But they also mandate that every other year all nonconstruction employers fill out an […]