Texas leads the nation in number of charges filed with the EEOC alleging gender discrimination, race discrimination, age discrimination, and disability discrimination, according to a recent story from the Society for Human Resource Management. It is time for more employee training and better personnel policies for your Texas business so you don’t have to battle a discrimination charge.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled last week that two unrelated companies may be held to be joint employers of an employee who works for just one of the companies. Browning-Ferris Industries of California, 362 NLRB No. 186 (August 27, 2015), ruled that unrelated companies may be joint employers even if one employer has no power to hire, fire, supervise or determine the pay of an employee of the other employer.
The NLRB says that it “will no longer require that a joint employer not only possess the authority to control employees’ terms and conditions of employment, but also exercise that authority”.
In other words, if you as a business owner contractually could say anything to your subcontractor about the work you want performed by the subcontractor’s employees, then you can be jointly liable to those employees if any of the subcontractor’s employment practices go awry, even if you never actually exercise any control over your subcontractor’s employees. Continue reading Employers Face “Joint Employer” Liability with Unrelated Companies
There are companies that want to sell you expensive workplace posters that you don’t need to purchase because they are available for free online. Many employers are afraid that they don’t know which employment notices must be visible in the workplace, so they fall for the marketing pitch to pay for these expensive commercial posters.
As a Texas employer, have you received advertising in the mail similar to the notice pictured here? Such notices appear official, and can feel almost threatening, with warnings of penalties and fines associated with an employer failing to post current state and federal employment posters in the workplace.
It is not necessary for a Texas employer to pay $84 for the poster offered here. While it is true that posting certain notices and information is legally required, employers need not pay any company for this information. Free copies of the required posters can be found from the websites of each of the federal or Texas agencies that require them. The Texas Workforce Commission has graciously gathered a list of these posters into one place for you here.
Not only are you out the money if you buy one of these expensive posters, but these for-profit posters could actually hurt you if they promise rights to your employees that the law does not give them (such as promising Family and Medical Leave rights if the company has less than 50 employees and isn’t required to provide Family and Medical Leave). You don’t want to obligate yourself to things the law doesn’t require you to provide. The poster “invoice” pictured here didn’t ask the size of the employer’s workforce and apparently was not tailored to the laws to which a particular employer was subject.
As of August 2015, the posters that you as a Texas employer must have on your bulletin board, depending on the size of your workforce, are as follows: Continue reading Workplace Posters For Free Online
A Lubbock auto dealer was accused of disability discrimination and recently settled the claim for $250,000. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) sued Benny Boyd Chevrolet-Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep, Ltd., d/b/a Benny Boyd Lubbock, and Boyd-Lamesa Management, L.C., for discriminating against the dealership manager with multiple sclerosis. Click here for more information.
The manager was hired before his diagnosis with promises of future ownership in the dealership. He managed the dealership successfully for six months before he revealed his disability, according to the EEOC. He was then faced with comments like, “What’s wrong with you? Are you a cripple?” He was also denied the partnership and quit, claiming he was forced to resign.
I am always concerned when my Texas Panhandle business clients don’t believe that employment lawsuits like this can happen to them. I’m sure this Lubbock dealer felt the same way. But there were there were approximately 10,000 charges of discrimination filed in Texas with the EEOC and the Civil Rights division of the Texas Workforce Commission during fiscal year 2014. Around 27% of those charges claimed disability discrimination. It can and does happen to employers here, and some of the cases, like the one in Lubbock, can be very costly.
What can you do to prevent or at least prevail in such suits? Continue reading Lubbock Business Settles Disability Discrimination Claim