Well, regardless of your political leanings, it’s definitely been an interesting political season. I have witnessed several heated political discussions among my acquaintances, and even in my family (let’s just say that my crazy teenagers don’t share my political views). Although physical violence has not yet been involved, there has been some nasty name-calling. And
Thoughts on Equal Pay Proposals from a Management Lawyer
Equal pay has become a hot topic on both the state and federal levels. As a woman who is a management-side employment attorney, I sometimes find myself puzzled as to how this topic came to be such a hot button issue, especially since there are already many laws on the books that address equal pay.
Return of the Beast: Religious Accommodation Redux
Back around Halloween, we offered you a seasonally appropriate and cautionary tale about accommodating an employee’s religious concerns. As we discussed in that blog about the case of EEOC v. Consol Energy, Inc., the employee refused to use a biometric hand scanner because he was afraid it would reveal or imprint the mark of the beast. Because the mark of the beast is supposed to appear on the right hand, the company told him to use his left hand, but the employee believed that using either hand was a problem. The company refused to permit him to record his time manually or to report it to his supervisor, and the employee chose to retire under protest. The EEOC brought suit against the company on his behalf for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation for his religious beliefs and constructive discharge (i.e. the employee was forced to quit), and the employee was awarded over a half-million dollars in damages- a death knell to the employer’s arguments!
Like a zombie, the employer has returned from the grave to ask the court to throw out the judgment on various grounds. The court’s reaction to the employer’s arguments provide some additional lessons for employers generally.
Continue Reading Return of the Beast: Religious Accommodation Redux
President Obama Radically Expands EEO-1 Reporting Requirements
On January 29, 2016, President Obama announced a series of actions intended to close the gender pay equity gap, including proposed revisions to the EEO-1 form that would require the submission of detailed pay information.
As President Obama stated in his press conference, and as set forth in a White House Fact Sheet, “New Steps to Advance Equal Pay on the Seventh Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission today issued a proposed rule to expand the information collected on the EEO-1 form. The EEO-1 form must be submitted annually in September by (1) employers with more than 100 employees and (2) government contractors with more than 50 employees and more than $50,000 in federal contracts or subcontracts. It requires employers to provide information regarding the race, ethnicity, sex, and job category of their workforce. The proposed revision would add the requirement to provide aggregated data on pay and hours worked, broken down into pay bands by the same race, ethnicity, and sex categories. According to the EEOC’s press release on the EEO-1 revisions, the EEOC and the OFCCP will use the submitted data to analyze pay disparities across industries and occupations, and facilitate federal antidiscrimination actions. In addition, EEOC will publish aggregated data that employers can use in their own voluntary compliance efforts.
Continue Reading President Obama Radically Expands EEO-1 Reporting Requirements
Must Employers Accept An Employee’s Stated Disability Without Question?
According to the federal district court in Mendillo v. The Prudential Ins. Co. of America, the answer is “yes.” But I struggle with this decision, because I think it ties an employer’s hands and undercuts the employer’s right to demand medical information under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In this case, a call center employee was pretty seriously injured in a car accident. There were some performance issues that pre-dated her car accident, and they continued after her return to work. About four months later, the employee’s responsibilities were changed so that her off-line work was taken away and she did telephone work full-time. She told her supervisor that the full-time telephone work would exacerbate her back pain, since she was able to get up and stretch when she was doing off-line work. In fact, her back pain did worsen with the full-time telephone work, which caused her doctor to order that she cut back on her hours. In addition, her performance took an immediate and significant turn for the worse. She was able to improve her performance, but it fluctuated over the next year, finally resulting in her termination. She then sued, alleging a number of claims including that the company failed to accommodate her in violation of the ADA.
Continue Reading Must Employers Accept An Employee’s Stated Disability Without Question?
Firefighter’s Fear of Fire Is Not Disability
As you may know, I love the quirky cases (like the Playgirl model who sued for sexual harassment). I recently came across a 2014 state case that falls into this category – the firefighter who is afraid of fire.
In City of Houston v. Proler, the captain of a firefighting crew refused to enter a burning apartment building, appearing to be frightened. He was reassigned to the training academy, but was eventually transferred back to active firefighting duty. Two years after the first incident, the captain arrived at a house fire. Again, he appeared to be frightened – unable to put on his equipment, take or give orders, and showing physical distress. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with “global transient amnesia.” Management (reasonably) considered this a “possibly dangerous situation,” and he was again reassigned to the training academy.
Nonetheless (and despite all common sense), the captain wanted to be reassigned to active firefighting. Because he was a union member, he filed a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement. Shockingly (to me), a hearing examiner ordered that he be returned to his fire suppression duties. Unsurprisingly (to me), the City appealed this decision to the trial court, at which point the captain brought claims against the City for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Texas state law. Shockingly (to me), the jury found that the City had engaged in disability discrimination against the captain, although it awarded him no damages (he did get $362,000 in attorneys’ fees). Shockingly (to me) the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the disability discrimination verdict.
Continue Reading Firefighter’s Fear of Fire Is Not Disability
Giving Employees What They Want Doesn’t Preclude Discrimination Claim
So I found this case, Smith v. URS Corp., interesting because it involved a black employee 
who got what he wanted, but was still able to sue for discrimination.
The black employee received the job he applied for (training specialist) and more pay than he asked for ($57,668 instead of $46,000). He was given a classification title and job code of “Senior Training Specialist (65010)” and a job grade of S5.12. Five months later, a white applicant applied for the same training specialist job but asked for a $65,000 salary. He was hired into a Senior Training Specialist role at his requested salary, with a classification title and job code of “Staff Training Specialist (65010) and a job grade of S5.13. Shortly after that, another black applicant applied for a training specialist position with a desired salary of “58K to 65K.” He was given the same job title, classification, code and grade as the other black employee.
The first black employee sued for race discrimination after he was terminated pursuant to a reduction in force. The trial court threw out his claims on summary judgment before trial because the black employee had received the job he wanted and more pay than he sought. (Hmm, that seems pretty logical, doesn’t it?)Continue Reading Giving Employees What They Want Doesn’t Preclude Discrimination Claim
The Playgirl Model’s Sexual Harassment Claim
So, someone who posed as a nude lumberjack for Playgirl is now upset about the (foreseeable!) consequences of his decision – teasing by his coworkers. And a federal court judge has found that the employee’s sexual harassment claim against his employer, based on his coworkers’ teasing, may have merit. To me, this case, Sawka v. ADP, Inc., is crazy on several levels!
Let’s start with the employee. I find the lack of personal accountability in our society to be appalling. Many people are unwilling to take responsibility for their choices and actions – and, in my opinion, this employee falls into this group. It seems to me that if you choose to put it ALL out there in a sexually-focused publication that is intended for widespread public distribution, you should realize that people (including those you know!) will look at the pictures, comment on them, and, yes, tease you about them. Really, isn’t the whole point of posing for a magazine like Playgirl to invite such attention? Now, I understand that the pictures date from 1991, and perhaps the employee regrets having posed for them at this point in his life. But the passage of time does not and should not absolve him of his responsibility for his (in retrospect) possibly ill-considered decision.
Moreover, his expectations of what his employer should have done were, again in my opinion, unrealistic. The employee initially failed to complain because, in part, he found it “embarrassing.” (Really?) When he finally complained about his coworkers, the employer conducted an investigation, which included interviewing the list of witnesses he provided as well as others. The employee now contends that the employer should have searched the computers of his coworkers to verify that they had looked for his pictures on the Internet. But at the time, I am sure the employer believed it had addressed the issue by speaking with the worst offender about his comments and instructing the Vice President in charge of the office to report any further comments or Internet searches for the employee’s pictures. Given that the employee admittedly did not make any further complaints (although he now alleges that the comments didn’t stop), the employer undoubtedly thought it had resolved the problem.Continue Reading The Playgirl Model’s Sexual Harassment Claim
No Protection for a Breastfeeding Mother?
As you may know, I am a die-hard management lawyer. For example, I recently saw a production of J.B. Priestly’s, “An Inspector Calls.” The titular Inspector forces various members of a wealthy family in Edwardian England to examine their roles in putting a young woman on the path to suicide. In particular, the father had fired the young woman from his factory for being a labor agitator. I know I was supposed to sympathize with the young woman, but I frankly thought the father had behaved in an completely 
understandable manner (although, of course, it would now be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act to do so). My husband told me, “Well, I guess you’re in the right profession.”
But every now and then, there is a case that just smacks of unfairness to me, even though it may be legally correct. Frederick v. State of New Hampshire was just such a case.
The employee’s new baby had difficulties with bottle feeding. In addition, the employee’s doctor provided a letter explaining that the employee should breastfeed as must as possible to minimize her anxiety disorder. In preparation for returning to work, the employee asked for either an extended break time to go to her baby’s nearby daycare center to breastfeed, or to have her baby brought to her and to be allowed to breastfeed her baby in the employer-provided lactation room.Continue Reading No Protection for a Breastfeeding Mother?
Religious Accommodations – A Beastly Concern
So as Halloween approaches, a recent religious accommodations case involving the “mark of the beast” seemed seasonally appropriate.
For those of you not so familiar with the Bible, the Book of Revelation tells the story of a satanic beast that comes out of the earth and forces all humans to worship another beast coming from the sea. The worshipers are marked on their right hands or their foreheads with the number “666” – i.e. the “mark of the beast.”
Several years ago, a client implemented a biometric timekeeping system, which used a hand scanning procedure. One of the employees objected to using the new system on religious grounds, based on his fear that the system would either imprint or reveal the mark of the beast (it wasn’t terribly clear exactly what the concern was). My partner, Mike McGuire, noted that the mark appears on the right hand, however, and the employee could simply use his left hand on the scanner. Well, that seemed to fix the problem – a pretty simple solution, wasn’t it?
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out so easily for another company – Consol Energy. In that case, an employee who was an Evangelical Christian objected to the biometric scanning system for the same reasons as our client’s employee. Consol actually provided a letter to the employee from the company that made the system, explaining that the Book of Revelation specifies that the mark will appear only on the right hand (or forehead), and therefore the left hand may be used for scanning purposes.Continue Reading Religious Accommodations – A Beastly Concern