President Appoints New EEOC Leadership
President Barak Obama recently announced his choices to head up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), essentially promoting two current Commissioners to leadership posts at the federal agency. Stuart J. Ishimaru was appointed as Acting Chairman of the EEOC and Christine M. Griffin as Acting Vice Chair. Ishimaru’s term will expire on July 1, 2012. He…
Read MoreBlackBerry Overtime
Ever make a work- related call or send an email from your Smartphone when you weren’t actually “on the clock”? Most people seem to be doing that these days, especially in busy Atlanta. You may very well be entitled to overtime pay for those activities, under some circumstances, as a new term has just leaped…
Read MoreOvertime Pay for Information Technology Workers
Information technology workers are notoriously overworked. They put in long hours, field endless emergency calls in and out of regular hours, get no credit when things go well and take the blame when anything goes wrong. Moderns cities like Atlanta have more than their share of IT workers. But because of an often- misunderstood FLSA…
Read MoreIs Travel Time Overtime?
One side issue that often arises in talking about overtime is travel time. The FLSA has some guidelines on when an employee’s time spent travelling is compensable. When is it considered to be overtime, and when it is travelling from Atlanta to Marietta considered to be all in a days’ work? For the most part,…
Read MoreGeorgia Jury Duty and Court Attendance Leave Laws
There are numerous urban legends and endless misinformation about employers’ rights and obligations to employees when the employee has to appear in court (as something other than a defendant). Georgia Law on Court Attendance Leave Here is a basic summary of relevant Georgia law on this subject: Georgia’s jury duty leave law comes in under…
Read MorePresident Obama Signs Ledbetter
The first bill that President Obama has signed while in office was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed on Thursday, January 29th, and which overturns the 2007 US Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber. Ledbetter, who travelled with the President on the inauguration train from Philly to DC, and who…
Read MoreGrandfather Eligible for Leave to Care for Newborn Grandchild under FMLA
Under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a parent is entitled to take FMLA leave for the birth or care of a newborn child. An interesting twist on this issue was recently addressed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over the federal district courts of Florida, Georgia and…
Read MoreCity Firefighters not Entitled to Overtime under Fair Labor Standards Act
In most overtime cases under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the courts interpret the exemptions to the law narrowly, in favor of the employees seeking to be paid overtime. However, in a recent overtime collective action case decided by the Eleventh Circuit (the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over the federal district courts of…
Read MoreEEOC Issues New Guide to Americans with Disabilities Act
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued a new guide to help both employers and employees better understand some complicated issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act: The Americans with Disabilities Act: Applying Performance and Conduct Standards to Employees with Disabilities. The new guide addresses an issue under the ADA that has given rise to a good deal…
Read MoreAmendments to Americans with Disabilities Act Promise New Day for Disability Discrimination Plaintiffs
In late September, President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments of 2008, which will become effective January 1, 2009. As we wrote in a prior post, although the ADA is, in theory, a wonderful law for disabled employees, in practice, it has been very difficult for employees to prevail in disability discrimination cases. The United States…
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