Monthly Archives: July 2016

Sexual Harassment Prevention Training Essential

Discrimination, Management, Personnel Policies, Training, , , , ,

Training photo

Every employer with 15 or more employees needs to require employees to attend sexual harassment prevention training. That is the takeaway that businesses need to understand from a new task force report on harassment in the workplace that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published in June 2016.

The EEOC’s report states that businesses have “to reboot workplace harassment prevention efforts.” The EEOC is especially concerned that most sexual harassment  prevention training focuses only on defining harassment and telling employees what they are prohibited legally from doing.

Instead, the EEOC is encouraging (read: requiring) businesses to also include workplace civility training and bystander intervention training. If a disgruntled employee makes an illegal harassment claim against your business in the future, the EEOC, as the investigating agency, is going to immediately require your business to provide evidence that you thoroughly trained your employees on these new topics. If the harassment complaint goes to trial, this training will also be your best defense.

Bystander Intervention Training is defined by the EEOC report as training that helps employees identify unwelcome and offensive behavior and creates collective responsibility to step in and take action when they see other employees exhibit problematic behaviors. The training is geared towards empowering employees to intervene when they see unacceptable conduct and gives them resources to do so.

Workplace civility training focuses on teaching employees to abide by reasonable expectations of respect and cooperation in the workplace. The emphasis is supposed to be positive—what the employees should do—rather than those things they are prohibited from doing. The training needs to include navigation of interpersonal relationships, an understanding of conflict resolution and teaching supervisors how to be civility coaches. In other words, it is now the company’s responsibility to teach workers how to be responsible, respectful professionals. On the job training and supervisor modeling is fine, but you need to add formal in-house training also.

Interestingly, at the same time that the EEOC is “encouraging” employers to promote more civility in the workplace and to prevent bullying and harassment, the National Labor Relations Board is issuing decisions that punish non-unionized businesses for written policies requiring employees to be respectful to coworkers.

The NRLB has repeatedly found that a company is infringing on an employee’s labor rights when the employer enforces handbook policies like this one from T-Mobile’s employee manual: “Employees are expected to maintain a positive work environment by communicating in a manner that is conducive to effective working relationships with clients, co-workers and management.” The NRLB thinks that kind of policy has a chilling effect on employees who have a right to discuss with coworkers all of the terms and conditions of their employment. I’ve alerted you about the NRLB’s crusade against policy manuals before.

So you as an employer are left with trying to decide whether to be investigated and sued by the NLRB or the EEOC. Continue reading Sexual Harassment Prevention Training Essential →

Pot Smoking Still Grounds for Termination

Drug Testing, Medical, Personnel Policies, Termination, , , , , ,

Can an employer in Texas still fire someone for smoking pot? For once, my lawyerly answer does not have to be “maybe”. Yes, you can fire an employee for testing positive for marijuana.

Unlike Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., the Lone Star State still treats the recreational use of marijuana as illegal. It is also illegal to buy, sell, grow or even possess pot in Texas, so going to Colorado to buy it and then bringing it back to Texas is not an option.

If your written substance abuse policy tells your employees that you prohibit “illegal drugs”, then you have the right to enforce that policy regardless of whether the pot is illegal under federal, state or local laws.

Therefore, a Texas employer can still require a drug test of an applicant, a current employee, an employee involved in an accident or when the employer has a reasonable suspicion of drug use. If the test shows that the employee has used marijuana, the employer can discipline or fire the employee for violation of the company substance abuse policy.

But what if the employee claims that he is smoking pot for medicinal reasons? Continue reading Pot Smoking Still Grounds for Termination →

Employers Responsible for Preventing Illegal Immigration

Documentation, Hiring, , , ,

In all of the talk about immigration in this election year, it is important for businesses to understand that the responsibility for preventing illegal immigration generally rests on employers, who must verify that all new hires are eligible to work in this country.

Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), employers are mandated to verify an employee’s identity and eligibility to work in the United States by completing an Employment Eligibility Verification, more commonly known as a Form I-9.

The current version of the I-9 (available here) says on the form that it expired on March 31, 2016, but it is still in effect three months later because a newer version has not been released.

Every employer, regardless of the size of the business, must present the latest version of the Form I-9 to each prospective employee and confirm that employee completes and signs the employee section of the form.  The employer is required to inspect the employee’s supporting documents and have an authorized individual from the Company sign the employer section of the I-9.  All of these items must be completed within three (3) business days of the employee’s hire date.

An employer’s failure to properly complete the Form I-9 can bring about costly fines by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  As recently as April 2016, a judge ruled that Golden Employment Company in Minnesota was liable for failure to timely present I-9 forms for at least 125 employees as well as not preparing forms in any capacity for almost 236 workers.  The employer also inaccurately completed some of the I-9s.  The civil penalties totaled $209,600.

Most ICE inspections result from complaints from current employees, former employees, labor unions and even competitors. However, random inspections are also undertaken by ICE.  It’s important to make sure all of your work eligibility records are up-to-date and properly completed.

What can you do to avoid penalties and ensure I-9 compliance? Continue reading Employers Responsible for Preventing Illegal Immigration →