2018 – 2019 will be an extremely busy time frame for employers addressing new HR laws across the country, especially in California, New York State, and New York City. These new and amended laws are relevant to unlawful employment practices, sexual harassment, discrimination, and general harassment of employees, contractors, or any person during the course…
DetailsUnconscious biases are prejudices triggered by the brain to automatically assess people and situations based on personal background, cultural upbringing, and life experiences. Examples of such prejudice would include casting unknowingly judgement on others as a result of their skin color, gender, age, height, weight, introversion versus extroversion, marital and parental status, disability status, foreign…
DetailsNew York State and New York City have updated New York’s sexual harassment training requirements and become the most current state to enhance their sexual harassment laws, the #MeToo movement is definitely affecting more than just Hollywood. New York is moving closer to California with their overhaul of employment laws. In mid-April 2018, New York’s…
DetailsThe majority of professionals are familiar with, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law which protects employees’ rights and makes discrimination unlawful against employees based on their sex or race. Employers and employees working in Washington, D.C., however, are governed by additional anti-discrimination laws and protections such as the DC…
DetailsOctober 15, 2017, SB 396 was approved and requires employers to provide gender identity training that protects transgender workplace opportunities. On August 17, 2007, Assembly Bill 1825 (AB 1825) became effective and was mandated as a harassment prevention training requirement in the state of California. AB 1825 requires for employers to provide their supervisors (within…
DetailsWithin the past few years, the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission (FEHC) recognized a growing statistic in prominent sexual harassment cases and allegations being made against California local agency officials. As a result of this, a new sexual harassment training mandate known as Assembly Bill 1661 was introduced by Senator McCarty on January 13,…
DetailsOn September 15th, 2016 California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that established protection against harassment and sexual violence for custodial staff in the workplace. With janitors staging a hunger strike outside the state Capitol to support the bill that would increase workplace protection against sexual harassment and sexual assault, Gov. Jerry Brown…
DetailsIf you are a California employer with over 50 employees, even if they are in other states or regular contractors, then you should know in 2016 AB1825 is a mandated training year for Sexual Harassment training. The training must be 2 hours long and interactive to be effective. The training can be a webinar or eLearning…
DetailsAlarming statistics were revealed stating a fourth of all college/university female students are subjected to sexual harassment and or rape while attending higher education institutions. The highest risk is to freshman students during the “red zone” time period which is considered to be the period from the first day on campus up to the Thanksgiving break when most students have been accepted into a fraternity or club and the initiation phase is somewhat completed. Obviously the report stated that drug and alcohol use are contributing factors to these incidents and most go unreported because the victims feel no one will take them seriously.
This is a common complaint and problem for employers. Employees go to their supervisor or Human Resources (HR) and use the word “harassment”, it gets everyone nervous followed with questions on how to handle it.Many employees use this word to provoke action and the employee is often thinking that any type of offensive behavior is illegal workplace harassment.
Facebook gaffes that can cause trouble in the workplace aren’t unique to drunken college students anymore. As more companies and their workers tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media.
Next week a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency’s first complaint linked to social media.
In another case, workers sued a restaurant company when they were dismissed after managers accessed a private Myspace page the employees set up to chat about work.
