A judge in Michigan has allowed the lawsuits filed by two former Hooters employees to move forward. Cassandra Smith, 20, and Leanne Convery, 23, both of Michigan, filed separate lawsuits in response to being fired because of her weight.

And it looks like they have a case for their complaint. The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), enacted in 1976, prohibits Michigan employers against discrimination on the basis of weight.

Under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), it’s illegal to subject people to differential treatment based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status or marital status.

The ELCRA prohibits employers from discriminating against any member of the protected classes listed above in hiring, compensation or the terms, conditions or privileges of employment.

The law is Michigan’s version of the federal Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Equal Pay Act all rolled into one. While those federal laws cover employers with 15 or more employees, the state law covers all employers.

To put a finer point on it, Michigan House bill 4529, called the “Respect for Physical Differences Act” is being proposed.

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TechCrunch announced today that Madhu Yarlagadda, Skype’s incoming Chief Development Officer, has resigned from his position. Mr. Yarlagadda’s resignation comes one month after negative comments about him as well as his subsequent influence upons other to obtain positive comments on a TechCrunch post were brought to his employer’s attention.

The New York Times says he left after scathing comments on TechCrunch about his new role at Skype came to the attention of Skype executives. The post they’re referring to has dozens of extremely detailed negative comments about Yarlagadda, although we’ve deleted the worst of them. That level of uniform negativity was unprecedented in our experience.

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Another victory for the LGBT community! A Georgia Court found that the termination of Vandy Beth Glenn violated the Equal Protection Clause. Ms. Glenn was fired due to her transition from male to female which her manager determined would be “inappropriate, that it would be disruptive, that some people would view it as a moral issue, and that it would make Glenn’s coworkers uncomfortable.”

Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in 2008 claiming that Ms. Glenn was treated unfairly due to her gender identity status.

From GA Voice:

Lambda Legal’s lawsuit, filed in July 2008, claimed that Glenn’s termination violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection guarantee because it treated her differently due to her nonconformity with sex stereotypes and her medical condition. After the State’s motion to dismiss failed, the two sides filed motions for summary judgment in September 2009. Using the high standard of scrutiny required for sex discrimination claims, the Court ruled that Georgia General Assembly officials violated the Constitution and discriminated against Glenn by terminating her for failing to conform to gender stereotypes. Using a lower standard of review, the Court rejected the second Equal Protection claim that Glenn was discriminated against on the basis of her medical condition.

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Who would have figured that the videos below of the cute little bears vehemently (and profanely) offering opposing views of the iPhone 4 versus the HTC Evo would cost a Best Buy worker his job? Particularly since these videos gave no indication whatsoever of who the animator was, let alone where he worked.

From TechCrunch:

The video in question was made by Brian Maupin, a 25-year-old based in Kansas City, Missouri. For the past three and a half years he’s been working at Best Buy selling mobile phones. He’s probably not going to be doing that anymore as Best Buy has suspended him indefinitely and is currently taking the steps to terminate him, Maupin tells us. The reason? The video…Maupin says he was asked to quit, which he declined to do, and so they suspended him this morning telling him that he would most likely be terminated after they review it with HR.

Best Buy’s response:

Best Buy spokesman Justin Barber said in an e-mail Friday that the company was still deciding how to proceed with Maupin, whom he called an “aspiring filmmaker.”

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It’s well know that because same-sex marriages are not recognized by the Federal government, gay and lesbian employees who wish to elect benefits for their respective partners (aka “Domestic Partnership“) must accept that their pay will be taxed for such coverage. This is to assume that the option for such coverage is even offered at all in states other than California.

In an effort to level the playing field, Google has taken an amazing step towards gay rights and equality by announcing that they will raise the pay of workers equal to that of the taxes they would have to pay for partner benefits, the very same benefits that are otherwise tax-free for their heterosexual peers. Google has also made other benefits available to their gay employees, again allowing them to have the same benefits offered to the non-gay employee population.

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According to today’s New York Times, Wal-Mart was given fair warning about its hiring and promotion practices long before a record-setting 2001 gender discrimination lawsuit cropped up, a warning that Wal-Mart chose to ignore. The kicker is that Wal-Mart was the one who hired the attorneys to examine their exposure to this kind of lawsuit.

The law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, found widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores and urged the company to take basic steps — like posting every job opening and creating specific goals to promote women and minorities — to avoid liability.

The 1995 report said that women employed by Wal-Mart earned less than men in numerous job categories, with men in salaried jobs earning 19 percent more than women. By one measure, the law firm found, men were five and a half times as likely as women to be promoted into salaried, management positions.

Without significant changes, the lawyers said in their confidential analysis, Wal-Mart “would find it difficult to fashion a persuasive explanation for disproportionate employment patterns.”

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Yet another story about government employees viewing and distributing pornography at work has come in above the fold. Last week we heard about the SEC employees who were surfing porn sites while Wall Street was burning. This week it’s in my former city of San Francisco where several administrators in the Planning Commission are on the verge of being fired for the very same thing. This also includes a manager who knew or should have known about inappropriate workplace conduct..

According to City Hall sources, Planning Director John Rahaim has recommended the firing of four high-ups – including veteran Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner – for allegedly receiving and in some cases circulating X-rated photos and videos for years.

The material wasn’t criminal – we’re talking “Debbie Does Dallas” stuff, not child porn – but it was “incredibly inappropriate for the workplace,” said one source, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the personnel case… Badiner, who just last week was serving as the department’s acting boss while Rahaim was on bereavement leave following the sudden death of his partner, is not believed to have sent any of the e-mails. However, he was receiving them and did nothing to stop their circulation, city officials believe, and stands to lose his $154,000-a-year job. City higher-ups got wind of the office raunchiness in December when a female employee filed a whistle-blower complaint, saying she had received numerous offensive e-mails.

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New York Post Gossip Columnist Cindy Adams has told women that they should just “deal with” sexual harassment because she has. Evidently, Ms. Adams was inappropriately when she was a child, but has moved on from the trauma and feels that other women should do the same.

She’s in her 40s. Hey, we’ve all been there. Those things happened to every one us in our earlier days. But that was before the world became so litigious. We’ve each endured some too tight hug or some slob whose hand wandered where it shouldn’t. Deal with it. That’s what we did in our younger, prettier days. Dealt with it. In some cases, sticking a pen in the guy’s lower belly and whispering politely, “Try that again, pal, and you’ll have to go to Emergency to pee,” worked just fine.

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As promised, here’s an update!

Late yesterday, President Obama signed HR 4851 – the Continuing Extension Act of 2010.

The bill includes (via SHRM):

An extension on the period that individuals may file applications for Federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) from April 5, 2010 to June 2, 2010, and the period which individuals may claim and be paid EUC from September 4, 2010 to November 6, 2010.

An extension on the period that individuals may qualify for the Federal Additional Compensation (FAC), (the extra $25 per weekly benefit amount on state and federal unemployment compensation) will be extended for the same weeks as the EUC extension.

An extension of the period that the federal government will provide 100% reimbursement for weeks of regular federal extended benefit payments from April 5, 2010 to June 2, 2010, with the state option to continue the benefit extension period from September 4, 2010 to November 6, 2010.

An extension on the eligibility for the COBRA health insurance 65% subsidy for people who have lost their jobs through May 31, 2010. The bill also provides transition relief for individuals who lost their jobs between March 31, 2010, and the date of enactment.

We are, however, still waiting on HR 4213 which would extend the benefits through the end of the year.

The wheels of bureaucracy turn very, very slowly…

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The New York City Doorman/Porter’s union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, is threatening to strike. The issues at hand are not unusual these days. What complicates the matter is real estate.

From Rented Spaces:

The union contends that in the four years since the last contract was negotiated, property values have increased for owners by 28 percent, while the cost of living has risen by 11 percent. The union wants a cost of living adjustment to their wages. Instead of salary freezes, the union is encouraging employers to lower their operating costs by taking advantage of a new “Green Buildings” training program that would teach building operators to save cash through making their buildings more energy efficient.

and from MSNBC:

The two sides are debating wages, health benefits, sick days and overtime rules. The industry association cites the failing real estate market and declining property values as reasons the owners can’t pay as much as the union wants. The union says the industry is fundamentally strong and the recession is over.

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A new bill is sitting with the New York Senate and State Assembly hoping to hold responsible those employers who violate wage and hour laws by hitting them where it hurts – through increased penalties.

From the NY Times City Room:

The legislation — introduced in the State Senate and State Assembly — would subject employers that fail to pay, for instance, $10,000 in legally required overtime to having to pay twice that amount in damages. That would be above and beyond the $10,000 in back wages that current law already requires such employers to pay…For support, the bill’s backers cite a report by the National Employment Law Project [pdf] that found that the city’s low-wage workers experienced more than $18 million in wage violations each week, or nearly $1 billion a year. The report found that more than 300,000 low-wage workers in New York suffer wage violations each week, or $3,016 on average per year in minimum-wage, overtime and other wage violations.

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Yesterday, President Obama signed H.R. 4691, The Temporary Extension Act, into law, thereby extending both the COBRA subsidy and UI extension for the unemployed (of which I am one).

The Temporary Extension Act includes the following (via SHRM):

COBRA

The law’s COBRA provisions:

• Extend the eligibility period for the 15-month 65 percent premium subsidy to those involuntarily terminated from March 1 through March 31, 2010.
• Allow employees to receive the subsidy if they first lost group coverage due to a reduction in hours and then were terminated after enactment of the bill.

Unemployment Insurance

The law’s unemployment insurance benefit provisions:

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The California Supreme Court, in a rare unanimous decision determined early in February that the Kin Care statute of the California Labor Code which allows employees to take up to half of their annual accrued sick time to care for a relative who is ill, cannot be applied when the employer does not set a cap on annual sick time accrual. The case is McCarther v. Pac. Telesis Group, No. S164692, (Cal. Feb. 2, 2010)

From Jackson Lewis

laintiffs Kimberly McCarther and Juan Huerta worked for SBC Services, Inc., and Pacific Bell Telephone Company, respectively. They both were members of the Communication Workers of America, which had entered into a collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) with the employers. The sick leave policy under the CBA provided for up to five consecutive days of paid time off for employees’ own illness or injury in a seven-day period. Each time an employee returned to work from an absence the entitlement would renew. The CBA also provided employees each year with six paid personal days off that they may take for any reason.

Unlike other sick leave policies, however, this policy did not provide for a bank of paid sick days accrued incrementally over a period of time. The policy also did not cap the total number of days employees could be absent each year. Employees were not paid for absences to care for ill family members.

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Employers beware – or at least be aware – the IRS is cracking down on businesses who violate the the legal terms of working with an independent contractors.

The IRS said it would begin a three-year study of the issue this month. State crackdowns include:

- New York: A multi-agency team reported finding nearly 31,500 cases of employee misclassification and nearly $390 million in unreported wages from Sept. 2007 and the end of 2009. It had ordered employers to pay more than $28 million in past-due wages, taxes and penalties.

New York’s numbers were up significantly. Its team found 12,300 misclassification cases in the 16 months ending in December 2008; by a year later it had found about 19,200 more.

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Note: This article was brought to my attention from the SHRM discussion board.

In an opinion piece on ere.net, Dr. John Sullivan, currently a Business Management Professor at San Francisco State University states that faulty HR processes led directly to the issue that caused Toyota’s recall, the shootings at Fort Hood as well as the downfall of Enron and Bear Stearns.

Weak people-management practices have been attributed as the primary causes of failure in a number of notable cases. At Enron and Bear Stearns for example, reward systems that incented dangerous behaviors easily overpowered the effect of control systems designed to prevent fraud and ethical breaches. The mass killings at Fort Hood would not have occurred if the Army had better linkage between performance management and critical incident reporting systems.

Now Dr. Sullivan is a highly respected HR professional, having been the Chief Talent Officer for Agilent Technologies, so I certainly see where he is going with this, but I’m not sure that HR is the primary source of blame. I’m sure that HR shares some of the blame, but does not nor should not own it.

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