Do You Know Applicants Are Also Protected Under The Equal Employment Opportunity Law?

While most employers in the U.S are aware of the OSHA or Occupational Safety and Health Act that are meant to protect the Workplace safety and health of the employees, most of them are not aware of the less popular equal employment opportunity law. In fact, labor law posters also include this law. This article discusses some of the important aspects employers need to know about this law.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the authoritative body that enforces and overseas the federal laws that prohibit employment discrimination. These laws are meant to safeguard employees and job applicants against employment discrimination in terms of the following. Any unfair treatment or harassment by managers, co-workers or others in the work place based on race, color, religion, sex, nationality, age, disability or genetic information; denying reasonable workplace accommodation required by the employee on grounds of religion or disability; and retaliations on account of the employee complaining about job discrimination or assisting in a job discrimination investigation or lawsuit.

EEOC is vested with the authority to conduct enforcement litigation under a number of federal statutes that forbid job discrimination including the following.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forbids discrimination at workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), that safeguards men and women who perform more or less equal work in the same company from gender-based wage discrimination;

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), that safeguards individuals who are 40 years of age or older;

Title I and Title V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), that forbids employment discrimination in the private sector as well as in state and local governments against qualified individuals having disabilities;

Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, that forbids discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who serve the federal government; and The Civil Rights Act of 1991, that compensates monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination along with several others.

Employers must know that the employers who are covered and the employees who are protected by this law vary depending on several aspects including the type of employer, the number of employees in the organization, and the type of discrimination that is questioned or alleged. If an employee or job applicant feels that he or she is discriminated against at workplace, he or she has the freedom to file a charge of discrimination first with the EECO before filing a job discrimination lawsuit against their employer. There are also strict time limits put in place to file a charge. Once EECO receives a complaint, it will investigate to see whether there are reasonable causes to conclude that the discrimination has happened.

All the laws enforced by EEOC need the employers to maintain certain records and documents irrespective of whether a charge is filed against them. In fact, this obligation is more while a charge is filed. EEOC is free to collect workforce data from any employer irrespective of whether or not a complaint is filed against the employer. It is mandatory that employers post notices regarding the federal laws that forbid job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, nationality, age, genetic information or disability.

What Employers Need To Know About Federal Labor Laws Pertaining To Forced Lunch Breaks

The Fair Labor Standards Act also popularly called as the FLSA, formulates the obligations of employers with regard to minimum wage, working hour and child labor. The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor is the authority that enforces the FLSA, and takes action on employee complaints by investigating the employer policies and record maintenance methods. Though the federal law deals on short breaks given to employees besides longer meal breaks, it does not mandate the employers to provide them. Federal labor law posters 2013 surely will have this regulation if you want to notice.

Federal does not talk about giving a lunch break. However, it deals on compensation for time off for meals on a typical workday. The FLSA states that if the employer requires the services of an employee while eating lunch, then then the lunch period must be considered as compensable time that cannot be deducted from the number of hours worked. For instance, if the shipping clerk munches a sandwich in between attending to calls from suppliers and accepting deliveries, then the employer should not deem this unpaid time as the clerk is still at work.

Length

Though federal laws do not mandate coffee or restroom breaks, they do contain some references to guide the duration of a short break if it is a paid time when compared to meals breaks. The Labor Department says breaks lasting over five to twenty minutes can be paid time, while longer breaks like meals break need not be paid time provided the employer relieves the employees from all work related responsibilities while they are eating lunch. Though federal laws talk of lunch breaks as lasting over about 30 minutes, it is not deemed forced time as the federal law does not require it.

 

Workplace Policy

Policies with regard to workplaces significantly differ and a given organization is free to abide by the set of policies that helps streamlining its operations. For instance, though employers cannot literally compel an employee to eat, you can expect that the employee takes time away from work during scheduled lunch break. Irrespective of whether the state law talks of it, employers can deem this as a workplace guideline. The advantage of this policy is that the employees relieved of all their work related responsibilities over a defined period of time. It also rules out any questions as to which employee needs to be paid for the lunch break thereby simplifying payroll and employee scheduling.

State Law

Employers must abide by both federal and state laws. Though it is not mandatory for a company to provide time off for lunch as per the federal law, it must however act as per state laws, many of which prescribe lunch breaks for employees. With respect to employee's shift, some state laws even ask the employers to provide 30 to 60 minutes for a lunch period that is not paid. Under certain conditions, the employee can waive this time, however it enables employers strongly motivate employees to take time off to rejuvenate before working for the remaining shift time.

Some Other Reasons For Posting 2013 Labor Law Posters

While searching for 2013 labor law posters you must have been told a lot of times about the importance of posting them because you could get fined otherwise and a lot of other things. However, there are many other reasons why you should put these posters on the wall. After all, the government must have assessed many reasons before passing on the orders for posting these posters on the walls of the organizations. Not to mention that even the non-profit organizations aren’t exempt from this law and if they have 2 or more employees, they must post the posters like other organizations too.

                                           

The first reason why you should have 2013 labor law posters is because you are required to do so but since we are talking about the other reasons we’ll mention them now.

Informing the employees about their rights and benefits affects their performance in a very positive way. While a person can think that an employee after knowing his minimum wage, leave, vacation, working hours etc. rights will spend a lot of time thinking about them, the truth is that there is a lot of other things at the same time. There is a very positive effect on their thinking after reading the posters.

Once you have the 2013 labor law posters on the walls of your organization the employees will read them and know how many hours they should be working for, how many leaves they can take, under what circumstances they can take the leave etc. Along with that, they will also get themselves in the circle of professionalism that if they have asked for leaves and other rights according to the law, they must be in the office according to the law as well. It is a simple give and take scenario.

They will not think of being absent from the office without acceptable reasons. To exercise their rights they will have to make sure that they act professionally in the office as well. They will think twice before taking a leave without a reason or disappearing without informing because they will know that the effect of such absenteeism will directly affect their rightful leaves in a year. You can look for 2013 labor law posters on the internet, print them for free, post them on the walls and see how they suddenly create a professional environment in the office.

Another psychological effect of the labor law posters in the office is that your employees start to trust you. They know that if their organization is so open to disclosing the rights of the employees to them then there is nothing wrong in the hearts of the management and administration regarding the rights of employees. Loyalty plays a big role in the performance and quality of performance of all the employees. Once they start considering your company as theirs, they will be motivated to their job well. All of this can be done with the 2013 labor law posters and you can print them on papers right now for no cost.

Understanding Federal Labor Laws Regulating Discipline & Termination

Federal labor laws including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Family Medical Leave Act pertain to regulations regarding pay, working conditions, working hours, and unpaid leave. Till this date there are no federal laws put in place to regulate the disciplinary and termination activities of the employer. Handling discipline and termination issues are totally under the discretion of the employer. Though the federal government does not intend to intervene in the decision of the employer in this connection, there are laws enacted to see that such processes once initiated are done fairly. Federal labor law posters 2013 will surely have this regulation included if you want to take a look.

Employment-At-Will

Employers generally make the employees and job applicants understand that their employment with the firm is at-will. The expression ‘Employment-at-will’ means the employer reserves the right to sever the working association at any time either assigning reason or without assigning reason. In the same way, the employees also have their rights to end their working relationship with the employer. Often, the employment-at-will doctrine in misunderstood as a federal law. This is merely a guiding doctrine pertaining to a standard practice to which the employers adhere to while deciding to terminate employees on disciplinary actions.

Termination

The U.S. Department of Labor's webpage regarding issuing termination notice to employees says that the FLSA "has no requirements for notice to an employee prior to termination or layoff." Therefore, some employee terminations come under the purview of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, with due consideration to the size of the firm, reasons assigned for terminations or layoffs, and the number of employees affected by this measure. At the same time, WARN does not figure into the employer’s decision regarding disciplinary actions or terminations of employees. It only pronounces the processes and guidelines for employers to consider while they lay off or terminate employees on account of business slow down or closure.

Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws

The federal laws forbidding unfair employment practices include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination Act of 1967 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Talking in the context of decisions connected to employment, unfair practices might mean practices like issuing warnings to women while failing to discipline men, or firing someone on the basis of his or her race or national origin. No federal laws are enacted so far. However, there are laws that forbid employers from engaging in unfair ways of disciplining or terminating employees.

Unequal Treatment

A few employers abide by formal disciplinary process like progressive discipline under which usually they give two to three warnings for poor performance, violating the company policies or misbehaving at workplace. If a given employee is noted to indulge in the same behavior actions for which he or she is served disciplinary warnings or write-ups, then the company might decide to terminate his or her services. However, employers need to implement the same set of disciplinary procedures in all cases of indiscipline issues failing which they shall be accused for unequal treatment. In other words, the department managers for instance should not demonstrate inconsistent practices while dealing with discipline and termination issues of same nature in two different cases.

Union Support

The National Labor Relations Act forbids any discipline and termination of employees on the basis of whether the concerned employee is a union supporter. Especially during the six-week long representation campaign preceding a union election, NLRA requires that the employers should not implement disciplining or terminating activities giving an impression that the it was done since he or she favored a union support.

2013 Labor Law Posters To Keep Things On Track

If you are an employer and you have two or more people working for you in the organization, you are required to post labor law posters in your premises or give them to the employees for them to know their benefits, rights and limitations well. For any organization it is compulsory to put only the most updated labor law posters and it’s best that you find them on the internet first. Just go for 2013 labor law posters and you will have many websites offering you the latest posters with most recent amendments in the laws reflected in the posters.

One important thing to remember when posting the labor law posters is to post both, federal and state law posters. Federal labor law posters don’t require frequent changes but can change at any time and most companies providing the posters are well aware of these changes. The state law posters are the ones that change quite frequently and within a year a hundreds of things can change in them. This is why any employer is recommended highly to go for only the 2013 labor law posters because if the posters are not updated the employer can get fined or punished.

The best way to go about the matter is to go online first and look specifically for your state’s labor laws. While searching for them you will easily find out the changes that have been made in them recently. Find a company that ensures to provide posters with these changes already included. You’ll be glad to know that most of these companies have their own professionals deployed solely on the task of capturing all the changes made by federal or state’s ruling body in the labor laws and inserting those changes in the latest editions of the labor law posters.

While there are many websites that will provide you the laminated versions, automatic notifications for changes in the laws and many other privileges for a fee, many organizations are providing these posters for free. These websites allow you to print the 2013 labor law posters from their websites. All you have to do is arrange the paper and print the poster on the paper, which is big enough to clearly display all labor laws. Once again, you must remember to put federal as well as state law posters because they are different and changes are made autonomously in them.

If you are an organization it is best that you start right away to search for 2013 labor law posters because when you are doing your job well, the employees will be compelled to do their jobs well. When they will see that you have put posters on the walls, which are only for their benefit, they will feel the sense of responsibility on their shoulders as well. Just like many other things, the sense of responsibility is also contagious. Making your office environment professional and friendly for your employees will only make their performance better and eventually your organization will benefit from that.