Labor & Employment Developments Blog

As most everyone has heard due to the 24-hour news cycle, the House passed healthcare reform.  Specifically, the House passed the U.S. Senate’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872), a bill intended to fix certain aspects of the Senate’s original bill. 

So you just got comfortable with your blog, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  What about location based social media?  Part game and part micro blog, these websites allow you to check in throughout your day with your location and related comments while earning various online honors and prizes. 

There has been a lot of news coverage lately of Rep. Eric Massa’s resignation and apparently related allegations of harassment of male staffers. 

David Meerman Scott at The Huffington Post suggests that the U.S. Department of Defense new social media policy is superior to that of many companies. 

In the days following the shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, some alarming facts have been discovered by the media about the alleged shooter, Professor Amy Bishop.  In 1986, she shot and killed her brother after a family dispute.  In 1994, she and her husband were questioned in connection with a mail bombing attempt, and in 2003, she was charged with assault for punching a woman at an IHOP restaurant.  This has prompted some talking heads in the media to question the University’s hiring practices. 

In the 1985 classic “Better Off Dead,” John Cusack’s character is given the following advice on downhill skiing: “Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.” 

I am amazed at how often employment litigation is a self inflicted wound for the employer. In an ongoing series, I am going to share some of  the common self-inflicted wounds that I have witnessed and offer some suggestions for avoiding them.

Fox News is reporting that a Florida student has been kicked out of the National Honor Society over a Facebook page that was critical of his high school.  I’m sure this story is far from over and may end up at the courthouse.  For our purposes, it raises the issue of how to address the use of social media in the workplace and outside the workplace.  Do you have a policy that governs this issue?  If you do not, you should consider one. 

An interesting article from Portfolio.com notes that:

“Lawsuits over overtime, long a bane of big business, are moving their way down the ladder. More such suits are being filed against small and mid-sized businesses, too.” 

Every now and then, I encounter an argument in the context of a harassment claim that inappropriate comments were not directed toward the complaining party but were made for all to hear.  The argument goes that if the comments were offensive, they were offensive to all and therefore not actionable.  This is sometimes referred to as the “equal opportunity jerk” defense.