Think twice before implenting that “English only” rule in your workplace

White Americans, what?
Nothing better to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You’re an immigrant too!

– Jack White, Icky Thump (2007)

Total Employment and Management has agreed to pay $276,000 to settle a national origin discrimination and retaliation charge filed with the EEOC challenging the employer's "no Spanish" rule in its workplace.

The EEOC alleged that TEAM not only imposed its no-Spanish rule without an adequate business justification to support it, but it also fired five employees for defying the rule and continuing to speak Spanish.

Wal-Mart (allegedly) did a 💩 job of accommodating this employee

Why can't some employers understand the interactive process and make accommodations that are simple and easy to make? I wish I knew the answer. After reading the facts of a lawsuit the EEOC just filed against Walmart, I know that Wal-Mart doesn't know the answer.

The EEOC claims that Walmart violated the ADA by refusing to provide a reasonable accommodation to a deli associate suffering from Crohn's disease.

A tip on tipped workers: pay them correctly or else

The Department of Labor has sued the owner of two restaurants claiming that servers were not properly paid overtime. 

El Toro Loco Legends LLC in Kansas City and El Toro Loco Lenexa LLC in Lenexa, Kansas, paid their tipped wait staff a minimum wage of $2.30 per hour, but did not properly calculate the overtime premium owed to those employees.

They calculated the overtime premium based off of the $2.30 tipped minimum wage instead of the greater of the full minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or the employee's effective weekly hourly rate including all tips received by the employee, less the employer's statutory tip credit against wages paid directly to the employee.

What does an AI-written employee handbook look like?

Last week, I spoke at our sold out Wickens Workshop. The topic — employee handbooks.

As is the case whenever I speak on that topic, I was sure to make a point about the risks and dangers of relying on internet forms to craft your company's handbook … or as I put it, "Google, J.D."

Which led me to this thought — what happens when people start asking AI bots to write their handbooks?

So, I asked Bard, Google's new AI, to write me an employee handbook. Here's the very underwhelming result.

NLRB General Counsel goes nuclear on severance agreements in her guidance on McLaren Macomb

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo just released her Guidance in Response to Inquiries about the McLaren Macomb Decision. 

Recall that McLaren Macomb held that garden-variety non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses in workplace severance agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act by unlawfully infringing upon the rights of employees to engage in protected concerted activity.

Just how far does Ms. Abruzzo push the limits of McLaren Macomb in her interpretation?

The 4th nominee for the “Worst Employer of 2023” is … the pizza shop pressurizer

Allegations of forced labor and the physical abuse of employees will always land you on my Worst Employer list.

Last week the feds arrested Stavros Papantoniadis, a/k/a Steve Papantoniadis, the owner of Stash's Pizza, on charges of forced labor related to his employment of an undocumented worker and forcing him to work for more than decade through threats of deportation coupled with physical and verbal abuse. 

Federal court permits employer docking from an exempt employee’s PTO bank without violating the FLSA

I think it was Otis Redding who once famously sang, "I'm sittin' on the dock of the pay." 🤔

Whether or not I have that lyric correct, docking an exempt employee's pay is fraught with legal risk that, if done unproperly, could not only jeopardize the exempt status of the employee under the FLSA, but also all employees in the same job classification working for the same managers responsible for the actual deduction.

What about deductions from PTO or other paid leave banks? Do they carry with them the same legal risk. According to the recent opinion of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Higgins v. Bayada Home Health Care, taking deductions from banks of PTO or other paid leave raises no issues whatsoever the FLSA and therefore does not jeopardize any of the statute's exemptions.