Discrimination

Claims can take a toll on an employer’s reputation, finances, culture and more — not to mention the effect on employees directly involved. While the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported a drop in charges received last year, the more than 72,000 filed show that discrimination and harassment complaints are still very much a concern for employers.…

The U.S. Senate this week confirmed the nominations by Republicans of three commissioners for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Keith E. Sonderling, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, was confirmed Sept. 22 with a term that expires July 1, 2024 with a vote of 52-41. Sonderling was nominated in July 2019,…

From video game publishers to coffee shops, pay disclosures are rattling HR. Sources say employers need to be careful when forming a response. In recent years, workers across entire companies and even entire industries have taken pay transparency to a new level via crowdsourced spreadsheets. One of the most recent examples comes from video game…

Employees come to work to perform a job, but they also bring their social, political and personal ideologies, which they may choose to express in conversations with co-workers, on their clothing or in other ways. Thousands of Americans are actively engaging in social justice movements and standing up for causes such as Black Lives Matter.…

Workers must be able to de-escalate situations before they become heated and possibly violent, a recent client told us. In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many companies are requiring customers and employees alike to wear face masks. Walmart announced July 15 that face masks would be mandatory for customers, signaling the start of a widespread requirement…

Fair compensation requires both awareness and action………… Most HR leaders have heard disheartening statistics about the gender pay gap. PayScale, for example, reported in its Gender Pay Gap Report for 2020 that women make only $0.81 for every dollar men make. And the World Economic Forum has estimated that it will take more than 100…

States and cities are increasingly barring employers from asking about job applicants’ salary histories with the aim of closing pay gaps, but it remains to be seen whether those laws are having the intended effect, according to recent research. An analysis of salary history bans published earlier this month by researchers at the Boston University…

In this, our fifth and final installment of Back to Basics, we outline an anti-retaliation checklist. Case in Point – when supervisors sat down with Frank Brown to tell him he couldn’t take leave to attend a doctor’s appointment with his wife during the workday, he yelled and banged his fists on the table, court documents…

As we continue our series on federal employment laws, here is the fourth of five installments for you to review. Case in point……..when Dennis Reynolds and Jack Lowe sued their employer for swabbing the insides of their cheeks to collect their DNA, they not only set themselves up to receive a $2.25 million jury verdict, but…

As we continue our journey into the basics of federal employment laws, here is the third of five in our series, this time we’ll discuss the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Imagine a woman named Dorothy has worked at an interior design firm for the last 30 years. She started out a few days…

3 Steps to Prevent Discrimination Complaints

Senate Confirms 3 Commissioners, Maintaining EEOC’s Right-Leaning Quorum

Pay Transparency Takes Center Stage as More Workers Talk Wages

How HR Should Respond to Social and Political Expression at Work

How Employers Can Train Front-Line Workers to Implement Mask Rules

Pay Parity: What Is It and How Does an Employer Get There?

Academic Studies Diverge on Salary History Bans’ Effects on Worker Pay

Back to Basics: A Retaliation Refresher

Back to Basics: The Lowdown on GINA

Back to Basics: The Ins and Outs of The ADEA