What I find most interesting in this article about stopping workplace gossip is not the company’s use of an “agreement to values” which prohibits back-stabbing, gossiping and the like; its the use of color-coded name plates to advise what communication style a particular employee prefers. Red is for those who are direct and to the [...]
Did UnitedHealth Group cross a line by asking its employees to lobby against health care reform?
Minneapolis-based UnitedHealth Group is taking some heat for providing form letters to its 75,000 U.S. employees opposing aspects of the health care reform bill working its way through Congress. The company also urged employees to write letters to local newspapers and then share those letters with the company’s lobbying arm. One of the form letters provided [...]
The importance of performing a disparate impact analysis in Reductions in Force
A federal jury on Tuesday awarded more than $6.2 million in an age discrimination suit brought by two scientists who said they were fired from their jobs at a Pennsylvania chemical manufacturing company when the company targeted only older workers in layoffs in 2005. The case highlights the importance of statistically analyzing the effects of [...]
Denny Hecker alleges that a former employee stole privileged documents
As reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, there is a very interesting sideshow developing in the bankruptcy case of former auto mogul Denny Hecker: his attorneys are demanding that one of his creditors, Chrysler Financial, return thousands of internal documents that Hecker alleges were stolen in 2008 by his former executive assistant, Cindy Bowser. Chrysler Financial, [...]
Guest Post: Pets at work
This is T.J.’s associate, Calhoun, writing with a guest post on one of my favorite topics, Pets at Work. Loved the piece in the recent MinnLawyer Blog (although not happy that it featured a cat!). One small kibble quibble with the post: I’m not sure having me at work is all that relaxing, because I [...]
Are employers really under siege?
As a sidebar to my previous post, here is an interesting article claiming that employers are “under siege” by the EEOC. The numbers do suggest more cases: from 2007 to the end of 2008, overall claims filed with the EEOC increased by 28%. Observers also suggest that the EEOC is being more aggressive in its [...]
Sexual Favoritism
I ran across this interesting post in the Workplace Prof Blog on sexual favoritism. It reminded me that the EEOC treats sexual favoritism as a subset of sexual harassment. According to the EEOC, sexual favoritism can constitute a Title VII violation, but only if it is “widespread.” The EEOC Policy Guidance on Employer Liability under Title [...]
Is the internet merely a wicked temptation for employees?
Great article in Sunday’s NYT Magazine by Peggy Orenstein about the lures of the internet. Comparing herself to Ulysses lashing himself to his ship’s mast to avoid succumbing to the Siren’s song, she looks for ways to free herself from the internet. Her thesis: knowledge and information are two different things. “The trap is more of [...]
More on Flu Preparation
I don’t like the headline of this article in today’s Star Tribune because it suggests that we lawyers are getting rich on other people’s illnesses, but its worth pointing out because it quotes my friend Beth Papacek, and because it revisits a topic I wrote about a month ago here.
Tax advice for employment lawyers and their clients
Over the weekend I read a terrific article in Litigation, the Journal of the ABA’s Section of Litigation, called “Top Ten Tax Tenants for Trial Lawyers.“ (No, I usually don’t spend my weekends reading about tax policy, but I was out-of-town and had the magazine with me.) The author, Robert W. Wood of Wood & [...]
