"Meet H&N's newest assistant brewer," the Instagram post began. How nice, a brewery advertising its female-friendly work environment.
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
Employers, your awful stereotypes in job ads aren’t cute or clever, they’re offensive and illegal
"Meet H&N's newest assistant brewer," the Instagram post began. How nice, a brewery advertising its female-friendly work environment.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, April 28, 2022
Series of promotions dooms gay brewery employee’s sex discrimination claim
Midland Brewing Company hired Ryan Boshaw to work as a server. Over the span of nine months, it promoted him three times, to an hourly managerial position, to floor leader, and ultimately to front-of-house operations manager (the second highest ranking position in the business).
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, March 1, 2022
If you want to get yourself into discrimination hot water, stereotype your protected-class employees
To cases recently settled by the EEOC illustrate the point that stereotypes of protected-class employees are a quick path an expensive lesson.
- Ranew's Management Company agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a disability discrimination claim after it fired an employee based on a "lack of trust" instead of permitting her to return from a leave of absence resulting from severe depression.
- American Freight Furniture and Mattress agreed to pay $5,000,000 to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit based on allegations that managers made hiring decisions based on bias and stereotypes, including that women would not "do as great a job at selling furniture as men," could not work in the warehouse because "women can’t lift," and that female employees would be " distraction" to their male coworkers.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Pumping up workplace lactation rights
The U.S. Department of Labor has reached a settlement with Labcorp over allegations that it failed to provide lactating employees a space for them to express milk privately without fear of intrusion.
The investigation stemmed from an allegation of one employee in the company's Lynwood, California, location. DOL investigators determined that when the employee asked for a private place to express her breast milk, supervisors offered a common space that resulted in her being interrupted twice. As result, and per its settlement with the DOL, Labcorp has agreed, for all of its 2,000-plus locations nationwide, to "provide a private space as required with a notification on the door to guarantee an intrusion-free space."
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Employment law lessons from “Ted Lasso” – dating the boss
If you've not yet watched episode 8 (Man City) of the current second season of Apple TV+'s Ted Lasso and you don't want to be spoiled, now would be a good time to click the back button on your browser or close your email. Good? Okay. No grumbling; you've been warned.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, July 7, 2021
ABA President fixes the victim-blaming problem the ABA Journal created for working moms
Yesterday, I was highly critical of the ABA Journal for publishing a column that victim-blamed working moms for their lack of advancement in the legal profession. Then, ABA President Patricia Lee Refo did what she could to fix the injustice created by the journal of the organization she runs.
In her own column—Women's success in legal careers: Lack of advancement is not a 'woman' problem, it’s a 'profession' problem—Refo took apart the notion that female attorneys are to blame for their lack of upward mobility. They have not failed, Refo correct argues, their employers have failed them.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, July 6, 2021
The American Bar Association must never again victim-blame working-parent attorneys for the discrimination they suffer
The ABA Journal recently published a column by
Susan Smith Blakely, a career counselor and former law-firm partner, that does a gross injustice to every law-firm working parent.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, February 27, 2020
PLEASE, I’m freaking begging you, DO NOT use social media to determine applicants’ race and gender
Almost as long as social media has existed, employers have searched social media to dig up dirt on prospective employees. There is nothing illegal about these searches … provided you don’t use the information unlawfully. For example, to discriminate on the basis of a protected class.
If Lisa McCarrick, a former Amazon manager, wins her lawsuit against the online retailer, Amazon is going to learn this lesson the hard way.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Gay man claims he’s the victim of intentional discrimination because of his sexual orientation … and that’s the least of his employer’s problems
Wesley Wernecke, an ex-employee of New York event planning company Eventique, claims in his recently filed lawsuit that the company intentionally alienated him, ostracized him, and shut him out of the business after its CEO learned Wernecke was gay.
NBC News shares the details of the allegations in Wernecke’s lawsuit.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2019
What’s really at stake when the Supreme Court decides LGBTQ rights under Title VII
Sometime next Spring the Supreme Court will announce its decision on whether Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination implicitly includes LGBTQ employees. It’s poised to be the biggest employment law case of the past three decades. And not just because LGBTQ discrimination is such a hot-button, high-profile issue.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Poor taste does not amount to prohibited sexual harassment.
I once made the mistake of watching an episode of Orange is the New Black on an airplane. The guy sitting behind was very uncomfortably enjoying the show along with me, and I shut it down.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Why are so many employers discriminating against lactating moms?
Women were told to pump in their manager’s office or a meeting room without locks, where they were walked in on repeatedly. Many had to pump in view of security cameras. In two separate cases, restaurant workers were instructed to pump behind the bread racks, leaving them partly visible to colleagues and customers.
Those who do find an appropriate space often don’t receive the time they need to fully empty their breasts. A McDonald’s worker was yelled at and ordered to return to work before she was done pumping. A Family Dollar worker asked for more time to pump and got demoted to part-time. A spa employee was required to sign a piece of paper agreeing that she wouldn’t take any more breaks. Her inability to pump caused her to leak milk from her breasts while she worked.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, September 17, 2019
It’s illegal to refuse to hire men, even if you’re a sex store
The EEOC has sued Sactacular Holdings, LLC d/b/a Adam & Eve for sex discrimination for refusing to hire male applicants. What is Adam & Eve? The EEOC’s news release describes it as a “North Carolina limited liability company.” The more accurate description? According to its (NSFW) website, it’s “the leader in the lingerie and adult boutique market.”
How did it discriminate?
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, September 10, 2019
The supposed #MeToo backlash is just discrimination by another name
A recent study suggests that there has been a backlash against the #MeToo movement.
According to the Harvard Business Review, men have are treating their females co-workers differently because of #MeToo.
- 19% of men said they were reluctant to hire attractive women
- 21% said they were reluctant to hire women for jobs involving close interactions with men
- 27% said they avoided one-on-one meetings with female colleagues
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2019
This is what sex discrimination will look like if the Department of Justice gets its wish to legalize sex stereotyping
Last week the Department of Justice (on behalf of its client, the EEOC), filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to conclude that “sex stereotyping by itself is not a Title VII violation.”
What might this look like if the DOJ gets its wish?
Consider the following story (as told on Reddit).
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, August 22, 2019
The EEOC asks the Supreme Court to legalize sex discrimination
This fall, the Supreme Court will hear argument in three cases to decide whether Title VII’s coverage of sex discrimination also implicitly protects LGBTQ employees from discrimination. Last week, the EEOC filed its brief in the cases, making a startling argument in favor of legalizing not just LGBTQ discrimination, but all sex discrimination.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, August 6, 2019
It is an inexcusable sin for an employer NOT to have an anti-discrimination policy
There are some employment policies that you can get away with not having. An anti-discrimination policy is not one of them.
In Hubbell v. FedEx SmartPost (decided yesterday by the 6th Circuit), FedEx learned this lesson the hard way.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, July 29, 2019
#MeToo hasn’t killed the office romance, just the inappropriate ones
According to the National Review, #MeToo killed the office romance.
It must be a brave soul who dares to strike up a flirtatious conversation at the workplace microwave these days. Only ten percent of Americans report having met their mate at the office, a level that is half what it was in the 1990s.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, July 22, 2019
Parental discrimination claims pose big risks for employers
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, July 8, 2019
Why, yesterday, in France was a stadium full of people chanting “EQUAL PAY?”
Indisputable fact no. 1: Women and men should earn the same pay for the same work.
Indisputable fact no. 2: The players on the United States women’s national soccer team earn substantially less than their counterparts on the men’s team.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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