Archive for October, 2009

The EEOC and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will hold four town hall meetings throughout the nation to share information and gather comments about proposed regulations in the recently enacted Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act. Each town hall meeting will consist of two sessions, one for disability advocates and one for the employer community, offering opportunities [...]

If you’ve been underpaying and/or under-reporting your company’s payroll taxes, the IRS wants to know–and collect what’s due. With the annual "tax gap" between what’s owed and what’s paid estimated at $290 billion, the Internal Revenue Service is siccing its agents on 5,000 randomly selected employers beginning in November 2009 as much for a learning [...]

This week a House-Senate panel reconciling budget measures voted to extend for three years the E-Verify online employment eligibility system. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally withdrew the "no match" safe harbor rule of the Bush administration. The Bush-era "no match" rule gave employers three months to straighten out mismatched [...]

Business cheered the Supreme Court’s decision in Gross v. F.B.L. Financial Services that set the bar higher for age discrimination claims by employees. Prior to Gross, employees need merely show in court that age was one factor in their adverse job decision (a firing or passing over for promotion, for instance). Now they must show [...]

About one-third of all employees who call in sick are faking it, a percentage that has held steady over the years. However, the chances of getting fired for abusing sick-day privileges are falling, down from 18 percent a year ago to 15 percent today, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.com, a jobs site. The number [...]

The E-Verify online employee status system faced two new hurdles in September. On Sept. 8, the E-Verify Contractor Rule was set to go into effect but faced last-minute court challenges, and on Sept. 31 funding for the system itself was in danger of expiring. On the first issue, the courts sided with the United States [...]

Here’s a case that hinged on the statute of limitations for employment-based lawsuits–and how failure to post a basic federal and state labor law poster cost The Claridge Hotel in Atlantic CIty big time. Two Chinese national employees were dismissed by the hotel after one, a male chef, accused the other, a female room attendant, [...]

Sears Holdings Inc., without admitting any wrongdoing, has settled an Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) claim for $6.2 million, the largest single fine in history according to the enforcing agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC claims the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based retailer fired hundreds of employees who took workers’ compensation leave after being [...]