On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Everyone wants to support the troops, but when it comes to doing more than just putting a yellow-ribbon bumper sticker on one's car, some people fall off the wagon.
It is important that any Detroit resident who is a member of the military and gets deployed knows that he or she cannot be fired or penalized for his or her service. Surely there are plenty of employers who know it is wrong to discriminate against military members, but given how many active military members allege that they are discriminated against because they had to go serve abroad, it seems there are just as many employers who do not know that.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Workplace Discrimination on Tuesday, February 14, 2012
According to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, claims of religious discrimination are on the rise in the workplace. This seems to indicate two things: first, that as places like Detroit become more diverse, employees are more aware of their religious rights and second, that employers may be having difficulty keeping up with what they are supposed to do.
According to the EEOC, there were 4,151 claims of religious discrimination filed with the agency during the fiscal year 2011. That is a 9.5 percent jump from the year before, and claims of this nature have been rising steadily since 2005. In fact, the number of religious discrimination charges filed with the EEOC has more than doubled since 1997.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Monday, February 6, 2012
The Equal Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces employees' rights, received a record number of complaints in 2011, just as it did in 2010, the agency reported recently.
This indicates that workers in Detroit and all across the nation must be vigilant about ensuring that they are receiving all the benefits and privileges bestowed by our employment law system and are not allowing things like discrimination, harassment and retaliatory discharge to negatively affect them.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Monday, January 30, 2012
It's a tough economy out there, but if a Detroit-area worker is lucky, he or she will occasionally get a call from a recruiter who is offering employment at another organization. These kinds of calls and offers help workers develop a sense of what their skills are worth on an open market; even if a worker does not take the offer, hr or she can leverage it with their current employer andnegotiate for better wages or nicer perks.
But in Silicon Valley, home to the U.S.'s hottest technology and internet companies, competition for talent is so fierce that firms have essentially agreed not to compete with each other so they can be assured of keeping their own employees. At least, those are the allegations made in a lawsuit filed in San Jose recently.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Detroit readers probably remember last year when the U.S. Supreme Court told female Wal-Mart employees who were complaining of sex discrimination that they could not bring a class action lawsuit against the discount giant because they did not share enough in common to be considered a "class." The good news is these women have not given up in their quest to have their employee rights respected.
Lawyers who have worked with female Wal-Mart employees since then insist sexism is still rife at the Arkansas-based retailer's stores. One attorney who has worked with several female Wal-Mart employees has said it seems to him that the company is being more "sensitive" to the issue of gender in the workplace, but still has not done enough to ensure that sex is not a factor in pay raises or promotions.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Many people in Michigan work in restaurants, so they know that tips can be a really important source of income for people who work in the hospitality industry. Restaurants typically do not pay servers very much because they know they are taking home gratuities.
But that justification for paying lower-than-legal wages does not hold as much water when the person is doing tasks that do not generate tips, so for the time spent doing tasks, should employees be paid higher wages? That is the employment law question that the Supreme Court recently said could go to trial.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Pepsi Beverages, a Minneapolis-based bottler of the cola many Detroit readers enjoy, has announced that will pay over $3 million to settle claims that it engaged in racial discrimination as it hired new employees, the upper Midwest branch of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced this week.
The EEOC said it had uncovered evidence that about 300 black job applicants who applied for positions with the company between 2006 and 2010 were discriminated against. One of the biggest issues was a background-check policy that forbade workers who had been arrested, but not convicted of anything, from ever obtaining jobs at the factory. Such a policy disproportionately affected the black community, the EEOC said.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Wednesday, January 4, 2012
If someone in Detroit were to buy a car, he or she would probably expect a credit check. The same goes for opening a new line of credit, obtaining a mortgage or taking out a loan. But what about applying for a job?
Some states have enacted employment laws meant to curb the ability of an employer to check the credit score of a job applicant. Employers say this is important because it provides insight into an applicant's judgment and responsibility, but critics say they do not like the idea of a future where a bad credit score could keep someone from a job that would allow them to earn the income necessary to get back in financial good standing.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Friday, December 30, 2011
In August 2010, Mark Hurd resigned as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. That same week, he settled with a woman who claimed that she was sexually harassed while she was a contractor for Hewlett-Packard.
Now, a letter detailing some of the alleged sexual harassment has been released and the details may be of some interest to readers in Detroit.
On behalf of Sterling Attorneys at Law, P.C. posted in Employee Rights on Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Around this time of year, many employers throw holiday parties for their employees. Although social activities like this are a nice gesture, it should go without saying they cannot and should not be a basis for making employees feel discriminated against if they choose not to participate.
But for two California men, that is exactly what happened, according to the suit they recently filed against their employer. The case may be of interest to Detroit readers since the men were employed by AutoNation, the country's largest auto parts distributors.
