According to the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”), the United States experiences a flu season each year. With this year’s flu season considered one of the worst since the 2009-2010 pandemic, many employers wish to implement policies to protect the workplace and wonder whether they can implement policies mandating vaccination for their employees.… Read More...
Sexual Harassment and What Employers Must Do to Comply
The latest headlines confirm the 2016 findings published by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that workplace harassment too often goes unreported. The EEOC reports that “approximately 70% of the individuals who experienced harassment never even talked with a supervisor or manager,” meaning that they didn’t report it to their employer.… Read More...
Court’s Ruling Requiring The EEOC To Reconsider Its “Wellness” Regulations Is Not Necessarily A Good Thing For Employers
The ruling in the AARP v. EEOC case may be detrimental to employers and their healthcare plans because the EEOC may either reduce the percentage of its allowable inducement (or penalty) below 30% of the employee cost for participation in any employer-sponsored “wellness” program to be considered voluntary or possibly return to its former position that any reward or penalty renders participation involuntary.… Read More...
A Drill Down on Pence’s Policy in Context of Avoiding Workplace Discrimination
David Donovan of South Carolina Lawyers Weekly posted an article, “The Pence Policy: Male-Female Interaction Rule May Have Pitfalls for Employers”, which addresses how Vice President Pence’s policy to never eat alone with a woman other than his wife might disadvantage women if the policy was employed in the workplace because of lost mentoring or career-advancement opportunities. … Read More...
Failure to Accommodate Sincere Religious Beliefs Can Be a Costly Mistake for Employers
Last week, in the case of EEOC v. Consul Energy, Inc., the Fourth Circuit affirmed a $586,860 judgment for a coal miner who claimed that his employer (Consul Energy) failed to accommodate his religious beliefs and constructively discharged him when it forced him to use a biometric hand scanner to monitor work hours.… Read More...
Will the Revised EEO-1 Form Be Stopped?
Last week, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) urged President Trump to rescind the new requirements of the revised EEO-1 form. I originally wrote about the proposed EEO-1 form last fall – you can find my blog post here.… Read More...
Will South Carolina Ban the Box?
In prior posts, we have noted that HR professionals should acknowledge the tension between making hiring decisions based on an applicant’s criminal history and avoiding Title VII liability, if refusing to hire certain individuals based on these prohibitions results in disparate treatment of or disparate impact on protected classes of individuals under Title VII (e.g., race, national origin, gender).… Read More...
EEO-1 Form Updated to Include Pay Data
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) just released an updated EEO-1 reporting form that requires employers to provide employee pay data beginning in March 2018. A sample of the proposed form can be found here.
Importantly, many companies are not required to complete an EEO-1 form.… Read More...
Another Win for Wellness
On Monday, September 19, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin issued an opinion finding that penalizing an employee by requiring the employee to pay the entire premium for participation in an employer’s healthcare plan if the employee refused to complete a voluntary health risk assessment to participate in the employer’s wellness program did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).… Read More...
EEOC Seeks Comments on Proposed Enforcement Guidance to Address National Origin Discrimination
The EEOC recently issued Proposed Enforcement Guidance to address national origin discrimination, which noted that 11% of the charges of discrimination received from the private sector allege national origin discrimination. The guidance is meant to assist EEOC’s staff investigating national original charges and EEOC lawyers instituting litigation, as well as to assist employers and employees.… Read More...