Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced yesterday that it is expanding a program for auditing companies’ hiring practices, and that it notified 1,000 companies this week that they would have to undergo such a review.
It appears that the audits will primarily affect private companies with some connection to public safety and national security, such as [...]
Immigration is expanding its audit program for illegal workers
GINA is coming this Saturday (no, not Geena Davis)
The new federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) takes effect for employers with over 15 employees this Saturday, November 21, 2009. Some are calling this the “most important new anti-discrimination law in two decades.”
The new law prohibits employers from requesting or considering genetic testing or genetic background information in hiring, firing or promotions. More specifically, [...]
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 by UHG makes [...]
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, [...]
Another way for employers to get into trouble
Most claims against private employers for invasion of privacy are dismissed because employees have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in most areas of the workplace. A restaurant in New Jersey recently discovered a novel way to violate an employee’s rights by violating a federal statute.
A manager at a Houston’s restaurant pressured an employee to give [...]
The EEOC wants Schwan’s to deliver (documents, not food)
Things should be interesting in St. Paul on Wednesday when my former partner, Magistrate Judge Janie Mayeron, hears a discovery motion in a sex discrimination case brought against frozen-food company Schwan’s by a former employee, Kim Milliren.
Milliren was accepted into a Schwan’s manager training program intended to prepare her for a position overseeing one of [...]
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 a [...]
Should social networking be allowed at work? Most CIO’s say no.
According to a survey from Robert Half Technology, 54 percent of chief information officers interviewed recently said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work. The survey included more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees.
CIOs were asked, “Which of [...]
Is E-Mail on its way out?
So says the Wall Street Journal. Its reign as the king of communications is over. In its place, services like Twitter and Facebook are profoundly rewriting the way we communicate.
“Email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether [...]
Should Companies Ban Social Networking Sites at Work?
Here is an interesting article from Law 360 about law firms struggling to control their employees’ use of Facebook and other social networking sites.
One commentator quoted in the article suggests that if LinkedIn is akin to a Chamber of Commerce dinner, Facebook is the “digital equivalent of a country club”. Really? I think that might [...]
