Monthly Archives: June 2008

Preventing Racial & Ethnic Discrimination

Discrimination

           With the debate over illegal immigration raging in this country, it seems like a good time to remind employers about the present laws concerning racial and national origin discrimination.

            No matter what your beliefs are about illegal immigration and those who protest in support of or against it, as an employer you must be careful to make employment decisions based only on job qualifications, not on your perception of or the actuality of an employee’s race or place of birth.

            Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers cannot discriminate in the terms and conditions of employment based on where an applicant or an employee, or his ancestors, originated. You also cannot discriminate because someone’s race is Hispanic, Arab or otherwise.

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Training your Employees

Training

How about some sobering statistics for employers?

  • The average jury verdict for sexual harassment cases nationwide was found to be $1 million in a 2002 study titled “The Changing Nation of Employment Insurance”.
  • That same study found that the average jury verdict for wrongful termination cases (such as discrimination) is $1.8 million.
  • The average cost to settle any lawsuit is $300,000, according to that same study.

Granted, these numbers include verdicts from states, such as California, where the juries have apparently never met a plaintiff they don’t want to reward with a big verdict. But even in Texas Panhandle, the land of more conservative jurors, it is clear to me after almost 20 years of practicing employment law that employers are at risk in the courthouse.

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Options For Compensating Injured Employees

Medical

             Bill is an employee of a small manufacturing business in Amarillo. His job involves operating heavy machinery. One day he injures his back at work. He stays at home for a couple of days. When the pain doesn’t get better, he goes to his family physician, who sends Bill to a specialist, who recommends surgery. Bill has the surgery and misses three months of work. Bill’s medical treatment and lost wages amount to more than $50,000.

            This scenario or a variation of it happens every day in the workplaces across the Panhandle. And employers dread it every day.

            On the job injuries raise very difficult questions for an employer. Obviously you as the employer want your employees taken care of properly before and after an injury. But what will that cost the employer? Will Bill sue his employer? What if Bill’s accident happened because he was negligent in not following the safety rules?

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Alcohol in the Workplace

Personnel Policies

           More than 7 percent of employees drink during the workday in America and 15 percent are directly affected by alcohol at work, either by drinking on the job, coming to work already drunk, or trying to work with a hangover.

The University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions recently announced these results in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Demographically, the study found that workplace alcohol use and impairment was more common among men than women, younger workers than older workers, and unmarried workers than married workers.  Occupations with the highest rates were management, sales, arts/entertainment/sports/media, food preparation and serving, and building and grounds maintenance. 

Since alcohol slows down an employee’s reaction time and impairs decision-making, the consequences in the workplace can range from unproductive to lethal.

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Military Reemployment Rules

Attendence

            Since 2001, the United States has deployed more than 1 million troops for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This means many employers are faced with reemployment issues concerning employees that left their jobs to undertake military service.

            The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) of 1994 regulates the rights of individuals who voluntarily or involuntarily leave a job to serve in the military.

            USERRA requires every employer to post a notice in the workplace informing employees of their veteran rights, whether or not you actually have any employees leave their jobs to serve.

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2006 New Year’s Resolution

New Year's Resolutions

            Every year at this time I make resolutions. Not for me, mind you. I know myself well enough to foresee that any promises to myself will just be forgotten by month’s end.

            No, each year I make resolutions for you as an employer. I get to give unsolicited advice as an employment lawyer about all the things you could do better during this new year to manage your employees and avoid employee lawsuits.

            I always draw these resolutions from difficulties that my clients have faced as employers during the previous year. However my first one has always concerned paying overtime correctly because that seems to be a chronic problem for Panhandle employers. Last year was no different.

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Prevent Legal Problems in Hiring

Hiring

          The hiring process can be as nerve-wracking on the employer as the applicant. One of Murphy’s laws of recruiting is “The ideal candidate – isn’t.”

Employers often receive embarrassingly bad resumes. Have you ever seen any as flawed as these actual resume excerpts compiled by Accountemps?

“Here are my qualifications for you to overlook.”

“Thanks for your consideration. Hope to hear from you shorty.

“I am a great team player I am.” (And I do not like green eggs and ham!)

“I have lurnt Word Perfect 6.0, computor and spreadsheat progroms.” (But has yet to master the spell check.)

“Received a plague for Salesperson of the Year.”

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Glass Ceiling

Discrimination

            Is your company ripe for a glass ceiling claim against it? If you answered “What’s a glass ceiling claim?” then you may have already lost the battle.

            A glass ceiling suit is one in which lower level employees that are women argue that they are ineligible for promotion not because of a lack of ability on their part but because the upper levels of management in a company are reserved for males. The women seek equal advancement opportunities, often by filing class action suits.

            The latest glass ceiling case in the news concerns a class action gender discrimination suit against Wal-Mart, in which the plaintiffs claim that women are paid less than men in Wal-Mart’s stores even when they have higher performance ratings and greater seniority, receive fewer promotions and have to wait longer than men to be promoted.

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Demographic Trends Predict Future

Personnel Policies

            Did you catch the news last month that Texas has joined three other states and the District of Columbia as a majority-minority state, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau?

Hispanics are now the largest minority group in Texas. According to population estimates based on the 2000 census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are minorities.

This demographic information should cause all Texas employers to once again reassess their policies and practices to make sure they are not vulnerable to discrimination claims. Both Texas and federal law make it illegal for an employer with 15 or more employees to discriminate on the basis of race, as well as age, sex, national origin, disability, religion and other protected classifications.

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Employment Myths

Discrimination, Termination

         One of my favorite websites is the mythbuster site, www.snopes.com. It gives me a place to exercise my skepticism about whether the Proctor and Gamble logo is secretly a satanic symbol, whether a picture of a great white shark attacking a British military diver hanging from a ladder suspended by a helicopter is real and whether Madelyn Murray O’Hair (who died in 1995) is circulating a petition to have all religious broadcasting banned from the airwaves (all untrue, by the way).

          I wish there were a similar website for the urban myths surrounding employment law. There is a lot of misinformation out there that is believed by both employees and employers. These myths cause confusion and employment law errors that can be costly.

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