If an employee files a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and you fire her shortly thereafter, you run the risk of also being accused of retaliation.  What if you fire the exployee’s fiancee?  Can he accuse you of retaliation and file his own charge with the EEOC?
According to the Sixth Circuit Court […]

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I must give credit for this post to a colleague, Michael Maslanka, a partner in the Dallas office of Ford & Harrison and the editor of the Texas Employment Law Letter.  He also writes a column called “Work Matters” for In-House Texas.  One of his recent columns was titled “No Jerks Allowed.”  I encourage you to […]

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The Vicar of Christ reads my blog?  The Bishop of Rome surfs the Web for advice given to him?  Pope Benedict XVI decides to set an example for CEOs everywhere?  Do miracles still happen?
On April 16, I posted “The Pope and Employment Law,” admonishing the Pope for not meeting with victims of the priest sex-abuse […]

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Boston Globe April 18: Pope meets with abuse victims

TIME: The Pope Tackles the Sex Abuse Issue
look for updated posts on this in The Word on Employment Law
It’s often said that there are two topics to avoid–if you want to also avoid controversy: politics and religion. If you’re a reader of this blog, you know I […]

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Conversations about race continue, courtesy this time of the presidential campaign.
First, let’s review.  It’s not ok to have a picture of a noose on a magazine cover.  Next, it’s ok to have a picture of LeBron James looking a lot like King Kong on a magazine cover.  And now, it’s not ok to refer to a couple […]

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It isn’t going away.  Previous posts have dealt with the issue of race in the context of the presidential campaign, in the context of the workplace and in other contexts when I felt that employment lessons could be learned.
You may recall my post on the controversy that broke out this past January over a remark made on the […]

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Across the country, state legislatures are considering so-called bullying legislation for the workplace.  Under most state laws, if bullying is based on one of the protected classes (race, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability or some other protected class under state law), this would amount to unlawful harassment.  If it’s just regular bullying, it’s not unlawful, […]

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A number of posts have previously dealt with the subject of racial harassment–in the context of the golf world, in the context of the politics, and in the context of a recent report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on the rather dramatic increase in charges of racial harassment in the workplace during ‘07.  As human resources […]

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As discussed the the ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter, a Tennessee case demonstrates that the answer to this question is no, unless the bullying is tied to a protected class.  So, if the bullying is based, let’s say, on race, sex, national origin, religion, age, or disability, then it would constitute unlawful harassment.  But bullying that’s just […]

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Progress has, of course, been made, regardless of your definition of progress. The presidential campaign provides a daily reminder of this progress. But you occasionally run into things that make you wonder–like a recent case reported in the Alabama Employment Law Letter.
In the workplace involved in this case, there was rampant use of the N-word […]

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