Disability-Anxiety and Claustrophobia: How to accommodate such employees

When the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) definition of “disability” was expanded by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, we told you to expect an increase in accommodation requests and disability discrimination claims. Many of you have experienced increased claims, and the courts are starting to feel your pain.

Legal and Compliance April 2015 Advertisers

Sexual Orientation Discrimination: What the law says

Until the last few years, employees had very few, if any, protections from discrimination in the workplace due to their sexual orientation. An individual could be subjected to termination from employment-based on sexual orientation discrimination without any recourse. Most state courts in the past tended to readily dismiss such cases or not acknowledge them as valid claims. While the current protections still have room for improvement, the laws in some states and the judges that interpret them have started to change.

Anti-Bullying Training: Why employers should make it mandatory

California employers with more than 50 employees must include “abusive conduct” prevention training in their mandatory harassment prevention training. Assembly Bill No. 2053 expanded the scope of training required by Government Code Section 12950.1, which requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide at least two hours of harassment prevention training to supervisory employees for every two years, to also require “abusive conduct” prevention training.

Gender Inequality: We often fail to see the smaller details

There is no doubt that diversity in the workplace is a perpetual theme within HR circles. It is now widely accepted that greater diversity categorically does have a positive impact on core organizational outcomes, yet, sometimes it seems that little progress is ever made – we certainly haven’t cracked the problem.

Who is a “Spouse”?: DOL’s new rule also considers same-sex marriages

The U.S. Department of Labor has issued a final rule amending the regulatory definition of “spouse” under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). We earlier reported on the DOL’s proposed rule to this effect. It has been effective from March 27, 2015.

Applicant Data: Best practices for reporting and collecting

Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor put on a compliance webinar about data collection and reporting requirements. They reached the section about reporting the demographic information, especially when the applicant has declined to answer voluntary questions. The audience was told the person completing the application should be the one who picks what information to disclose and what is the accurate answer.

Same-sex Spouses and FMLA: What the final rule says

As expected, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently published a final rule amending the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) regulatory definition of “spouse” based on the state law where the marriage was performed. This is known as the “state of celebration” rule. The previous definition incorporated the “state of residence” rule and turned on whether the law in the state where the employee resided when they applied for the leave recognized same sex-marriage.

Foreign Corrupt Practices: Who is responsible for compliance?

The Department of Justice (DOJ) still faces criticism over its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement strategy. Some decry that it is too aggressive, that the DOJ has moved into waters that Congress never intended the DOJ to navigate into regarding the FCPA. Others worry that the DOJ, through its use of settlement mechanisms such as Deferred Prosecution and Non-Prosecution Agreements (DPAs and NPAs), let corporations off too easily with fines and other monetary penalties being the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

Starting Pay: The often overlooked compliance risk in employee acquisition

When employers assess the compliance of their recruiting and hiring processes with anti-discrimination laws, the scrutiny usually focuses on whether outreach and recruiting efforts yield diverse slates of applicants (“good faith efforts”) and whether selection decisions at one or more steps along the way screen out disproportionately many applicants of a given gender or race (“adverse impact”). Far less scrutiny is applied to the question of whether disparities by gender or race persist in the starting pay rates of newly hired employees.