Rojgar Job News

It happened again, last week.  An employer was sued. Wait, what’s that? A new lawsuit gets filed EVERY day against employers?  (Actually, in federal court, at least 11885 employment lawsuits were filed in 2017. Far more than one a day.) But last week, there were a bunch of headlines – a new sexual harassment lawsuit filed against a major Connecticut employer. (I’m not going to mention it here for reasons that will become apparent in a second). News organizations ate the new lawsuit up picking up scurrilous allegations that were even denied by some of the people involved. This, of course, isn’t the first time that this happened — that is, news organizations publishing the fact that a lawsuit was filed. Why? Is it really news? Reporters would say yes, the public has a right to know.  And in fairness to them, a new lawsuit may have some newsworthiness. But I’d argue that many reports about lawsuits get published for far simpler reasons ...

Did you ever have an employee post a status update from his termination meeting with HR? I wrote about it a few years ago.  It seemed shocking then, and if anything, we’ve only seemed to be shocked more and more as each new tweet or blog post gets distributed with some outrageous behavior from an employee (or sometimes an employer!). It used to be that companies would have weeks, if not days, to respond to publicity.  Now, it’s hours or even minutes. Companies want to preserve their culture and reputation — and their corresponding products and services — more than ever. One misstep can get the online outrage machine going.  heck, even McDonalds’ got into a online snafu when it released (and then promptly sold out of) a unique retro szechuan sauce. This Thursday, my colleague Jarad Lucan and I will be talking about these issues at our annual Labor & Employment Fall Seminar.  It’s nearly sold out, but you can still see about regi...

If one of your employees is arrested and charged with something more than usually distressing and distasteful, the question will inevitably come up of whether he can be dismissed. The driver for that inquiry will often be a fear on the employer’s part of adverse publicity arising from its continued employment of him against that background. The trial might easily be a year away, so what else are you to do in the meantime? Suspension on pay for such a period is hardly viable, any more than suspension without. So can you dismiss for conduct which the employee may well be ultimately be found not to have committed (and which you yourself may not even believe in), but where the prospective impact on corporate reputation could nonetheless be significant? Time to go back to The Law. For a fair dismissal the employer needs to show that termination would be within the “range of reasonable responses” to the situation in which it finds itself. Generally in these cases it will pro...