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News Notes: New Survey About Family-Friendly Benefits

What are employers doing to help employees balance work and family needs? A survey by the Families and Work Institute of 1,000 employers with 100+ employees reveals that 90% of the employers gave workers time off to attend school events, and half let employees stay home with a mildly sick child without using vacation or […]

News Notes: Federal Discrimation Laws Don’t Cover Sexual Orientation

Medina Rene, a butler at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, filed a lawsuit claiming that because of his sexual orientation he endured daily harassment by his male co-workers and supervisor. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out his case, reaffirming a 1979 ruling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation […]

Race Bias: EEOC Slaps Walgreens with Nationwide Class Action

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed an employment discrimination class action against Walgreen Co., alleging that the drug store chain discriminates against African American workers in its stores nationwide. Walgreens operates over 5,500 stores in 47 states and Puerto Rico, so the lawsuit affects thousands of current and former employees.

News Notes: Minimum Wage Headed Up To $7.25?

On top of the minimum wage rate hikes enacted last year, a new measure has been introduced in Washington to boost the minimum wage to $7.25 by 2002. The current schedule ups the minimum wage to $5.15 on September 1, 1997, and to $5.75 on March 1, 1998. We’ll keep you posted.

News Notes: DOT Revises Drug And Alcohol Testing Rules

The U.S. Department of Transportation has implemented several changes in drug and alcohol testing regulations that impact transportation employees in safety-sensitive positions, such as bus drivers, railroad workers, airline mechanics and flight crews. The most important changes involve validity testing, which is designed to detect samples that have been tampered with or substituted. To ensure […]

Privacy: California Supreme Court to Review Workplace Privacy Ruling

In the December 2006 issue of the California Employer Advisor, we reported on a new ruling in which a California appeals court ruled that placing a video surveillance camera in an employees’ office, without notice, could amount to an invasion of privacy. This was true even though no actual viewing or recording of the employees […]

Workplace Wellness: "Success at Any Level"

According to one columnist, you really can’t fail in creating a workplace wellness program. Here’s a tool to help you do it. If one thing impressed us while writing our recent article on new HIPAA rules for workplace wellness programs, it was this quote from Indiana employment law attorney and business columnist Jim Jorgensen, as […]

Personnel Records: Police Officers Can’t Sue Even If Personnel Files Illegally Disclosed

A former Los Angeles police officer sued the city for improperly disclosing his personnel files in the course of a lawsuit accusing him of sexual misconduct with an underage police Explorer Scout. The court ruled that even if Los Angeles failed to follow the strict laws limiting disclosure of police personnel files, the officer had […]