Walmart wins discrimination claim brought on behalf of pregnant employees unable to work

Consider the following two policies:

• Employees injured on the job will be offered Temporary Alternative Duty ("TAD") — light duty that enables the injured workers to keep working and earning their full wages while complying with any relevant medical restrictions.

-vs-

• Pregnant employees with lifting or other physical restrictions related to pregnancy are required to go on an unpaid leave of absence, and no TAD is or will be made available.

In EEOC v. Walmart Stores East, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that despite the existence of the former, the latter did not discriminate against Walmart's pregnant employees.

The CDC is the tail wagging the public’s dog

Last week the CDC updated its Covid isolation guidelines. The agency says it's "to help the public better protect themselves and understand their risk." 

Most importantly, there is no longer any distinction between those who are fully vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated against the virus. Instead, the CDC says anyone can end isolation after five days if asymptomatic or if fever-free for 24 hours and other symptoms are improving. Thereafter, one should mask around others either through day 10 or sooner after two sequential negative tests 48 hours apart.

HR may not be employees’ “friend,” but it’s also not their enemy

As the former Microsoft VP of HR I can assure you that HR is not your friend.

That headline from a BusinessInsider article written by Chris Williams, Microsoft's former head of HR from 1997 thru 2000, caught my eye. 

He writes: "Do not see your team's HR representative as a friend. … HR is not your friend. … [T]hey are not paid to be the employee's ally."

On the one hand, Williams is correct. HR is not an employee's friend. But by framing the issue as such, he is suggesting that HR is an employee's enemy. That distinction is damaging. HR is neither friend nor foe of employees. It's their partner. If this is not how HR is working within your company, you need to reexamine why you have HR in the first place.

WIRTW #637: the “down on the farm” edition

I grew up in Philadelphia and attended City of Philadelphia public schools. My high school had 4,500 students and was surrounded by barbed wire fencing. In a lot of ways, it felt more like a prison than a school.

My kids attend cushy suburban private school. It's a luxury that I'm happy to be able to provide to them. They have a wooded 93-acre campus to explore, small class sizes, a unique curriculum not tied to state-mandated requirements, and now an actual farm that doubles as an outdoor experiential classroom. As far as I know it's the only such outdoor space in NE Ohio. 

Dubbed "Aspiration Acres," Lake Ridge Academy dedicated this new addition to our campus earlier this week. It has gardens, a silo, a barn, and a chicken coop with live chickens. Later this year the school will dedicate our new outdoor woodland all-purpose trail, complete with parkour obstacles and a sugar shack that will provide a permanent home for the 2nd the 5th graders' annual maple sugaring. 

For more information, I encourage you to visit lakeridgeacademy.org.

Here's what I read this past week that I think you should be reading, too.

Consistency matters when applying anti-harassment rules

Can an employer legally fire an employee who writes "whore board" on an overtime sign-up sheet? Let's explore.

Following unsuccessful negotiations for a new union contract, Constellium unilaterally implemented a new overtime policy that required employees to sign up for overtime on a sheet posted on a bulletin board outside the lunchroom.

Employees were not happy about the new policy. Those who opposed it began calling the overtime sign-up sheet a "whore board," as they believed that those who used it to sign up for overtime were selling out their union. "Whore board" quickly became common slang in the workplace (even among supervisors). There was no evidence that Constellium disciplined anyone for saying the vulgarity.

One employee, Jack Williams, went a step further. He wrote "whore board" on the sign-up sheet. Constellium then fired him for "willfully and deliberately engaging in insulting and harassing conduct."

Employee too distraught to work over Dobbs decision loses job

I haven't been shy about hiding my disgust over Dobbs, the end of constitutional protections for abortion, and the threat to reproductive, women's and other fundamental rights that our nation currently faces. 

Michael Lopez was also disgusted; so disgusted, in fact, that he couldn't even work. Lopez was a production coordinator at Universal Music Enterprises, whose job included processing a weekly Friday report of upcoming releases. Except the Friday that the Supreme Court released Dobbs, Lopez was too upset to do his job. Instead, he sent the following email to his co-workers:

Do you know what to do and not to do when federal agents arrive with a search warrant?

The front door to your business opens, and in walks a column of federal agents with boxes, computer imaging equipment, and a search warrant.

Do you what to do and what not to do? Does your business have appropriate response procedures in place? Any have you trained the person most likely to receive the agents (a receptionist, for example) on how to appropriately respond?

Here are some suggestions.