An employee must ask for ADA accommodation to receive it.
That is, an employee must ask for an accommodation unless the employee’s need for an accommodation is so obvious that the employer cannot reasonably turn a blind eye toward it.
Tuesday is Election Day (oh, thank God). As long as Election Day remains a working day, employees will show up to work late, leave work early, or take long lunches, just so that they can vote.
Ohio law requires that an employer provide all employees a reasonable amount of time off to vote on election day. According to Ohio Revised Code 3599.06:
Are you still struggling with how to handle your currently exempt employees who, one month from today, will earn less than $913 per week? If you have a salaried employee, no matter what they do on a day-to-day basis, if he or she earn less than $913 per week, beginning December 1 that employee will be non-exempt no matter what.
Let me offer a suggestion you may not yet have considered—the fluctuating workweek.
Have you seen Worker.gov? It is a how-to manual for employees to file charges with the full gauntlet of federal labor-and-employment agencies―EEOC, NLRB, OSHA, and DOL Wage-and-Hour Division.
Joe Purdy has been around for awhile. That I’d never heard of him before I bought my ticket to see him play with Rhett Miller last Saturday night is my fault, not his. The fact is that I should have heard of this thoughtful, folksy singer-songwriter, given that he contributed a song to one of my all-time favorite television shows, Lost.
So with no knowledge or preconceived expectations, we settled into our front-row seats at The Kent Stage to see Joe Purdy, and we were blown away. His positive message, clever lyrics, and dry wit completely entertained us.
According to OSHA, “The anti-retaliation provisions were originally scheduled to begin Aug. 10, 2016, but were previously delayed until Nov. 10 to allow time for outreach to the regulated community.” While I hate to be appear cynical, I can’t help but think that the pending lawsuit challenging the legality of these rules has something to do with this delay.
Second, even though OSHA keeps delaying these rules, it continues its efforts to educate employers and employees about them. On October 19, OSHA published both a memorandum and example scenarios interpreting these new anti-retaliation provisions.
The plaintiff in Tennial v. UPS [pdf], a former UPS manager, claimed that his manager placed him on a performance improvement plan, and ultimately demoted him, because of his race. In support of this claim, he relied in part on: 1) his manager’s alleged use of the word “n*****” in referencing another, nonparty UPS employee, and (2) a district president’s use of the word
“boys” in reference to Tennial’s black coworkers.
How do you spend your down time? What do you do when you’re not working? Me? I blog, and I play roadie for Norah and Donovan. If you happen to work as an animator at Pixar, you craft emotionally compelling and visually stunning short animated films. Like this one.
According to one of its two creators, Lou Hamou-Lhadj (the other is Andrew Coats), their “goal was as to make something that kind of contested the notion of animation being a genre, and one for children specifically. We really wanted to make something that was a little bit more adult in the thematic choices, and show that animation could be a medium to tell any sort of story.”
Yesterday, I noted that the EEOC is examining the impact of “big data” on how employers reach employment decisions.
Looking at an issue and doing something about it, however, are two entirely different animals. I wonder what business the EEOC has looking at this issue at all. The EEOC’s mission is to eliminate discrimination from the workplace. Certainly, there is no claim that neutral data points intentionally or invidiously discriminate based on protected classes.
As I’ve previously documented in this space, OSHA does a whole lot more than just regulate workplace safety. Its other responsibilities include enforcing the anti-retaliation whistleblower protections of a veritable alphabet soup of federal laws.
One such law is the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare). And, just last week OSHA published its final rule on whistleblower complaints under the Affordable Care Act, available for download as a pdf here.
In the name of equal time, I present the set from Donovan’s recent School of Rock performance. His band—Fruity Tunes—played a tight five song set, and even features Donovan taking some vocal responsibilities on Beck’s E-Pro.
While he’s still developing as a musician, there is no doubt that he loves the stage and performing. And, if the crowed leaves entertained, who cares if you miss a few notes here and there, right?
Employment Law 360 reports that Hawaiian Airlines has been sued by a group of employees claiming that their mandatory unpaid 10-day customer service training course violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to court papers, trainees learned things like federal regulatory requirements and how to use a standard airline software system. … The suit claimed the Fair Labor Standards Act and state law required trainees be paid at least minimum wage “because, among other things, attendance was mandatory, the course material was related to the trainee’s job, and attendance was during regular working hours.”
Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the day on which we make peace with God for all of the sins we’ve committed over the past year. On Rosh Hashanah God writes each person’s name in Book of Life. Over the next 10 days, Jews seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and other human beings. During Yom Kippur, each individual makes their personal petitions to God, and hopes for forgiveness for the upcoming year. If all goes well, when God closes the Book of Life at the end of Yom Kippur, your name remains and your soul is safe for another year.
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require paid lunches for employees. Indeed, quite to the contrary, the FLSA provides that meal breaks (presumptively defined as breaks of more than 20 minutes during which the employee is totally relieved of his or her work duties) can be unpaid.
What happens, however, to an employee’s overtime compensation if the employer pays an employee for non-working lunches? Is the employer entitled to use the extra compensation for the paid lunches to offset other overtime compensation?
I’ve been thinking all weekend whether to write about Donald Trump’s 2005 hot mic embarrassment, and, if so, what I’d write about. After all, I’ve already recently written about plagiarism and your b.s. meter in the wake of Melania Trump’s RNC speech, victim blaming sexual harassment victims in the wake of Donald Trump’s comments about his hope for his daughter’s reaction to workplace harassment, and, perhaps most critically, the importance of discourse in setting appropriate tones and modeling appropriate conduct in the workplace and beyond.
Then I saw Mr. Trump’s non-apology, and I had my theme.
Thank you to each of these resources for including me. Each contains a plethora of blogs and tweeters that are worth checking out. I know I found some new resources to follow, and I’m confident you will too.