Management’s Workplace Blog – Information and Insights for Employers
My teenagers thought that the new Maryland law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana meant that smoking pot was now legal. I’m sure many people have that misconception. Sadly for them, and for my kids, that is not correct.
This legislation, which takes effect on October 1, 2014, decriminalizes the possession of less…
You know how it goes. You have an employee with issues – performance, health, whatever. The relationship with the employee starts deteriorating. Now the employee wants his lawyer to be involved in any further discussions. What do you do?
As a general matter, an employee doesn’t have a right to bring his attorney to work. …
I follow proposed employment legislation in Maryland during our legislative session, which runs from January to April each year. More and more, the bills that are proposed use California statutes as models, which is troubling. Employers in our State certainly do not want Maryland to become the “California of the East!” More troubling still, in …
Even smart people can get tripped up on personnel decisions. Harvard, for example, ran into this problem in Pierce v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
That case involves an African-American university police officer claiming race discrimination and retaliation in the denial of three promotions and being placed on foot duty. The court threw…
In a happier, pre-ADAAA (Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act) time, I could blithely advise clients that any medical condition that lasted less that 6 months was only temporary, and therefore was not a covered disability under the ADA. Upon passage of the ADAAA, however, this elegantly simple, bright-line rule no longer applies. Instead, we …
This seems like a no-brainer – if an employee has to work fewer hours, the employer should expect (and assign) less work from the employee. Well, an employer you would think would be savvy about this obvious point – IBM – seems to have missed it, in the case of Hochstetler v. International Business Machines, …
We’ve heard about racial profiling by the police. But what about by employers? A state agency, the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission, made the very broad (and aggressive) finding that, “Racial profiling occurs when an employee . . . is questioned, disciplined, and terminated, on the basis of his race.” That is a strange definition of…
It seemed obvious to me, and I imagine most employers would agree, that if an employee refused to participate in a police investigation into workplace theft, you could terminate that employee. Well, we all might be wrong (??!!), according to a federal district court, in the case of Gomez v. Garda CL Great Lakes, Inc…
Most (I hope) employers understand that they have to comply with the notice and authorization requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when using a third party to conduct background checks of current and prospective employees. What many employers don’t realize is that there are certain FCRA obligations that may apply with regard to …
It dumbfounds me how creative people can be in coming up with new ways to harass others. Take, for example, the recent case of Royal v. CCC&R Tres Arboles, LLC, which involved a complaint of sexual sniffing. Yes, sniffing. Like a dog.
A female employee worked as an apartment complex leasing manager for only…
