One employment law claim that has been quickly becoming more popular these days is “family status discrimination”. That is, discriminating against someone based on their familial obligations or simply because they have a family in the first place.
Widespread use of this claim is so recent that it does not even have a consistent name [...]

A Reuters story this morning deals with what is both one of the most liberal paid leave policies I have ever seen and also one of the most blatantly discriminatory.
Hime & Company, a Tokyo-based marketing firm, offers paid leave to employees who have a bad breakup, termed “heartache leave”.  While this is quite generous and [...]

An article in Thursday’s Los Angeles Times discusses their own parent company, Tribune Co.’s new employee handbook that was introduced by their CEO, Sam Zell, via a recent e-mail to employees.
This caught my eye because it is not every day that a company publicly releases or discusses their employee handbook. In fact, many handbooks [...]

This is our final installment in a series dealing with employee rights laws that California’s legislature passed in 2007, but which Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed last month before they could take effect.
SB 836
Senate Bill 836 was heralded nationwide as the first law prohibiting employer discrimination against employees based on their “family status”.
For example, discrimination against employees [...]

This is the second post in a series on several very important bills the California legislature passed in 2007 to protect employees that the Governor vetoed at the last possible moment last month.
SB 537
Despite supporting a strong new law providing protected leave to military spouses whose husbands or wives are on leave from service, the [...]

California has passed a law providing employees whose spouses are on active military duty with protected leave from work to be with their spouses when they are on leave from duty.
Governor Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 392 into law last month and it became effective immediately. The Bill has two main components:

An employer of more [...]

Sometimes it is easy to forget that discrimination against women, minorities and (of course) minority women still occurs in this country.
This might bring to mind examples where uneducated, unskilled women are denied employment and/or harassed by uneducated men who think of them as sex objects, such as in the movie North Country.
However, as discussed on [...]

Q: I took a one-month FMLA medical leave for surgery, but my employer laid me off two weeks into the leave. I have always heard that an employer cannot terminate an employee who is on a medical leave. Is this true?
–Unemployed (CA)
A: It is a common misconception among employees that employers [...]