A study published recently in the Journal of Applied Psychology suggests that thin women are paid more than their overweight colleagues, while thin men actually make less. According to ”When It Comes to Pay, Do the Thin Win? The Effect of Weight on Pay for Men and Women,” being thin earned women about $16,000 more a year, on [...]
EEOC slaps Supervalu over firing of injured employees
Supervalu Inc. has agreed to pay $3.2 million to 110 workers to resolve allegations it systematically terminated disabled employees at Chicago supermarkets, one of the largest such settlements under the Americans With Disabilities Act. A federal judge in Chicago signed a consent decree this week resolving a 2009 class-action suit the Equal Employment Opportunity [...]
Has Favre dodged a sexual harassment lawsuit?
The second anniversary of Brett Favre’s final allegedly inappropriate text message to former Jets sideline reporter Jenn Sterger was this past week, and she has not filed a lawsuit against him. Under New Jersey law, the statute of limitations for workplace sexual harassment claims is two years. (Under Minnesota law, it is 0nly 300 days; [...]
Employers: Be cautious about the use of credit checks
I have written about the use of background checks in general, and credit reports in particular, several times before, including here, here and here. Now there is word that the University of Miami Medical School is facing a class action lawsuit over its use of credit reports to disqualify job applicants. The plaintiff in [...]
Testing for Legal Drugs
Very interesting article in today’s NY Times about the struggle to find a balance between an employer’s duty to keep its workplaces safe and an employee’s right to privacy in the context of testing employees for the presence of certain prescription. One company in Tennessee has been sued by three different employees who were [...]
Discrimination against Muslim employees is on the rise
Here is a story that is not a big surprise: A record number of Muslim workers are complaining of employment discrimination, from co-workers calling them “terrorist” to employers barring them from wearing head scarves or taking prayer breaks. Muslim workers filed a record 803 such claims in the year ended September 30, up 20 percent [...]
Sick Leave Conundrum
Interesting article from MSNBC about the pressures that employees face when their employers ask them to return to work from Family and Medical Leave before they are ready: “Many workers . . . have faced this conundrum [of being pressured to return to work early from leave], and it’s only gotten worse during this economic [...]
The 8th Circuit agrees with me!
I am thrilled to report that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the summary dismissal of a case I handled for Canadian Pacific Railway, Kirkeberg v. Candian Pacifiic Railway (My former colleague at Leonard, Street, Tracey Donesky, successfully argued the appeal). Kirkeberg had sued the railroad for disability discrimination after his position was eliminated. [...]
In disability cases, facts are more important than labels
In an opinion released today this week, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the somewhat counter-intuitive finding of a District Court Judge in Minneapolis that a woman with multiple sclerosis is not actually disabled. The case reminds us that despite the broad definition of “disability” found within the Americans with Disabilities Act, each of [...]
Managing employees with disabilities
Employers often struggle, and rightly so, with deciding how best to treat employees who have some physical or mental impairment, especially if the impairment seems to be affecting their work performance. It is often very hard to balance the demands of expected workplace performance with an employee’s rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act [...]
