Real Life Employment Law
Nearly every day, executives and managers, and the in-house counsel and Human Resources professionals who work with them, are confronted with unanticipated questions regarding the workforce. Just when they think they have "seen it all," along comes a new and often stranger scenario involving an odd twist to an area they thought they fully understood. These individuals often find themselves back at square one when trying to construct an appropriate response and devise a creative solution to the problem presented. Sometimes these "Quirky Questions" can be resolved easily; other times, they implicate practical and legal issues that are not immediately apparent.
This Quirky Employment Questions Blog addresses unanticipated questions regarding the workforce.
We encourage you to submit your thoughts and reactions to the questions presented. We also encourage you to submit questions that you would like to see addressed, subject to these guidelines.
Stephen D. Bell
Michael Droke
Joseph W. Hammell
Sarah Andrews Herman
Ryan E. Mick
William J. Miller
Melissa Raphan
Gregory M. Saylin
Gabrielle Wirth
David C. SingerBLOG CONTACT INFO
E: Wirth.Gabrielle@dorsey.com
P: 714.800.1455
Quirky Question # 54: We have an employee who has missed a fair amount of work due to various surgeries. As set forth in our handbook, we offer FMLA leave for employees who have worked 1250 hours in the preceding 12 months. When we were informed that our employee would need to miss additional time due to some follow-up surgeries,...
Quirky Question # 53: I read with interest your Quirky Question # 46, regarding the issue of whether an employer can fire an employee for having an abortion. I have a slightly different inquiry. Could we fire an employee because of her infertility treatments? I ask because we need to reduce our workforce slightly and one of the employees we...
Quirky Question # 52: I formerly was employed as an engineer of a high tech start-up company. I worked for the company for several years in a non-management role. The company struggled to complete its product (or even to get it to work properly). Because of these ongoing problems, the company had continual difficulties raising money. Nearly bankrupt, the company...
Quirky Question # 50: We are a small to mid-size company, with a relatively small legal department. We have a General Counsel. He, in turn, supervises two other attorneys. The General Counsel joined our company about two years ago, and frankly, his relationship with C-level executives has not been ideal. His relationship with the CEO has been particularly strained. The...
Quirky Question # 49: We have had various situations where we have thought that secretly installing a video camera would help us identify individuals behaving inconsistently with our company’s workplace rules. We don’t know whether this is a good or bad idea and we don’t know what risks are associated with secret videotaping of our employees. Do you have any...
Quirky Question # 48: The regular business hours for our IT Help Desk are 8:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Obviously, people sometimes need IT support outside those hours, and the four non-exempt employees who staff the Help Desk are issued BlackBerries to respond to e-mails and calls outside of regular business hours. These employees were very happy...
Quirky Question # 47: Our company uses rotating shifts, one of which starts at 11:00 p.m. and continues through 7:00 a.m. Every employee is asked to work that shift, one day, every other week. Every time a particular employee is asked to work that shift, she takes a day of FMLA leave, claiming that she has migraine headaches. She jokes...
Quirky Question # 46: We are a privately held company that runs a large software sales organization. The family that started our company and that still dominates its executive ranks has conservative values. Among those issues about which the owners feel strongly is the abortion issue. They do not believe that women should have abortions under any circumstances. One of...
Quirky Question # 45: We recently had an employee voluntarily resign because she found employment with our company “unbearable.” She then sought unemployment benefits. It is my understanding that an employee in Washington who quits is not entitled to unemployment benefits. Do we have grounds to challenge her claim?
Quirky Question # 44: I am a nursing supervisor working in a 250-bed acute care hospital. We have been engaged in protracted contract negotiations with the union representing our registered nurses for several months. Negotiations have bogged down over the nurses’ demand that their contract be amended to delete any provision for mandatory overtime to be assigned to nurses under...
Erica ChenErica is an associate in the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employ...
Jack SullivanJack is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment group, where he focuses his practice on employment adv...
Ieva AubinAs an employment and business immigration attorney, ...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Matt DurhamMatt defends employers in Utah and throughout the ...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Josh HughesJosh’s experience spans trial and appellate advoc...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Nick PappasNick litigates and counsels with respect to com...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...
