Basic Employment Law Manual for Managers and Supervisors (2012) PDF

2. Requiring workers to speak only English in the workplace. Unless the employer can prove sound business or safety reasons why it needs to bar the use of a language other than English, it cannot do so. 3. Disciplining an employee for not working on a day of religious observance. Employers are oblig...

2. Requiring workers to speak only English in the workplace. Unless the employer can prove sound business or safety reasons why it needs to bar the use of a language other than English, it cannot do so. 3. Disciplining an employee for not working on a day of religious observance. Employers are obligated to accommodate the religious needs of employees up to the point of undue hardship, and employees are required to minimize the potential conflicts. 4. Firing a minority employee for poor job performance where the poor performance can be traced to a racially motivated failure to provide the worker with the proper training to perform the job. 5. Firing an employee for absenteeism without determining whether the absenteeism was due to racially or sexually offensive conduct on the part of the employee's coworkers. 6. Early retirement plans—retirement must be truly voluntary and give a reasonable amount of time for employees to decide whether or not to retire early. 7. Terminating employees due to relocation of a facility while offering jobs at the new location to similarly situated members of another class ... or offering relocation or commuting assistance to members of one class but not to members of another class. 8. Refusing to hire a qualified applicant because of the need to accommodate that person's disability. An employer must provide a reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified applicants with disabilities unless it can prove that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on its business. 9. Firing a woman because she is pregnant, or limiting a pregnant employee's job duties based on pregnancy-related stereotypes. 10. Reassigning a female employee to less desirable projects based on the assumption that, as a new mother, she will be less committed to her job. 11. Denying a male caregiver leave to care for an infant under circumstances where such leave would be granted to a female caregiver. 12. Discharging minority employees, employees of one sex, or older employees in such large numbers that it can be shown that there is a pattern of discharging only workers who are protected by EEO laws. 13. Discharging a military reservist for excessive absenteeism when the absenteeism is due to his or her military service obligation. 14. Firing an employee who has lodged a discrimination complaint or participated in the internal or external investigation of discrimination charges. 15. Rejecting a mother of preschool age children for an executive training program despite her having more managerial experience and superior performance appraisals than some of the 18 selected candidates. Although selectees were of both genders, selectees with preschoolers were limited to men. 16. Refusing to hire an applicant because of his association with an individual with a disability. While the applicant was the best qualified candidate for a position, his status as divorced with sole custody of a child with a disability prompted the employer to give the job to the next best qualified candidate. The employer concluded the applicant's caregiver responsibilities might negatively impact his job performance and attendance, and advised the applicant to apply for future openings should his caregiving responsibilities change. 17. Deciding not to promote an employee to a position with significant public exposure out of fear that he will develop Parkinson's disease because he has a family history of the disease. 18. Failing to act upon a Muslim employee's complaints that his coworkers were making ethnic slurs and jokes. Employers have a responsibility to maintain a bias-free working atmosphere and must take immediate and appropriate corrective action to stop ethnic or other prohibited harassment. A word on sexual orientation and transgender discrimination. Even though Title VII does not protect applicants or employees based on their sexual orientation or transgender status, managers and supervisors should not be quick to dismiss their discrimination or harassment complaints because federal law (Title VII) plainly prohibits discrimination based on sex stereotypes. For example, a self-described "effeminate" homosexual male may have a claim under Title VII because he was harassed by coworkers for his failure to comply with "male" stereotypes. Managers and supervisors have an essential role in identifying and preventing conduct that is inappropriate, so comments and adverse employment actions related both to sex stereotypes and to sexual orientation and transgender status should be prohibited in the workplace. APPLY RULES AND STANDARDS FAIRLY Managers and supervisors are "the employer" to most workers. That is, people may shape their opinion of an entire organization based, in large part, on the day-to-day relationship they have with their manager or supervisor. If people are treated unfairly by their immediate managers or supervisors, they may come to believe that the organization is unfair and a bad place to work. Lawsuits are likely to result. It is important that managers apply workplace rules and performance standards fairly. There are two important elements to workplace fairness: 1. Respond to similar situations in a consistent fashion. 2. Treat people as individuals and in a respectful manner that recognizes the valuable contribution each person makes to the company. 19