Hiring

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Attempting to Prevent Workplace Violence

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Amy Bishop, a 42-year-old biology professor at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH), walked into a biology faculty meeting on Friday, February 12, and according to eyewitnesses, opened fire on her colleagues, killing three and wounding three others. She is charged with capital murder and the death penalty may be sought. Obviously this a nightmare for [...]

Protect Your Business From Embezzlement

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

There was an insignificant story in the Amarillo newspaper last week about a former credit union employee who was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for stealing $221,000 from her employer over a seven-year period. At least it seemed insignificant, based on the placement in the paper. But to her employer, I know it [...]

Time to Change I-9 Forms (Again!)

Monday, March 30th, 2009

As if employers didn’t have enough to keep up with, it is time to throw out your old blank I-9 employee eligibility forms (for immigration compliance) and adopt the new form as of Friday, April 3, 2009.
Click here to download a copy of the new required form. The form is available on the United States [...]

I-9 Cautionary Tale

Monday, February 9th, 2009

If you like to rant and rave about the lack of government enforcement actions to stem the tide of illegal immigration, remember that you as an employer are primarily responsible for making illegal immigration unattractive by requiring every employee to demonstrate his eligibility to work in the United States. This is done by requiring every [...]

Brief Updates

Friday, January 16th, 2009

The Department of Labor has released new notification forms to be used with Family and Medical Leave. If you have more than 50 employees (names on the payroll, whether full or part time), you should have an FMLA policy in your handbook and the FMLA poster on your employee bulletin board. Once an employee has [...]

Understanding Changes in Disability Discrimination Law

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

2009 is going to be remembered as the year that the Americans with Disabilities Act (”ADA”) became the full employment act for employees’ lawyers. That’s because dramatic changes to the ADA went into effect on January 1, 2009. No longer can an employer assume that the ADA is an concern only if an applicant shows [...]

Smoking as a Hiring Disqualification

Monday, January 5th, 2009

The latest employment controversy in Amarillo is Baptist St. Anthony hospital’s new policy of refusing to hire new employees whose pre-employment drug test shows the presence of nicotine. BSA is straightforward about its refusal to hire any new smokers for its non-smoking campus, in part because its sole mission is healthcare. Click here to read [...]

You Can’t Ask That!

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Here’s a quick list for you to print out and slide under the glass on your desktop. These are the questions that you can’t ask an applicant when you are interviewing them. Okay, you can ask them. Nobody’s stopping you. But you won’t ask them if you are smart, rational, prudent and consider a discrimination [...]

Employer Faces Child Labor Criminal Charges

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Note: This Employer’s Advocate column was originally published in the Amarillo Globe-News on Sunday, October 12, 2008.
This newspaper reported last month that the owner and the managers of the nation’s largest kosher meat-packing plant (Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa) were criminally charged with more than 9000 individual counts apiece for employing children younger than 16 to [...]

Checking An Applicant’s Past Employers

Friday, August 8th, 2008

One of the crucial parts of hiring a new employee is calling each past employer that the applicant discloses to find out what kind of employee the applicant has been during his career. It is true that some former employers won’t give out specific information about past employees, mainly because their employment attorneys have advised [...]

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