The 4th Circuit just made it easier for employees to sue for having to work in a hostile environment. The court said that unpleasant and offensive conduct aimed as one’s sex or race does not have to happen in the presence of the employee who winds up complaining. Conduct witnessed by other employees can be used as evidence ...

Offensive postings on the social networking web site Facebook led the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to fire one employee and discipline seven others.

Q. We do not believe that one of our employees is keeping accurate time records of her work. Can we pay her what we believe she worked instead of what her time records show?

California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act protects employees from sexual harassment by co-workers. But what happens if management stops the harassment but the co-workers find other ways to make life miserable for their victims? It’s HR’s responsibility to make sure a victim of sexual harassment isn’t targeted for other mistreatment ...

Q. What kinds of penalties or liability does an employer face if it fails to provide notice of COBRA coverage upon termination of an employee?

Employees who are fired after breaking work rules often allege that they were targeted because of some protected characteristic like gender, age, race or ethnicity. The best way to counter such claims is to know beforehand whether your organization is being tougher on some employees who belong to a protected class while letting others slide.

New England College has filed suit against poetry professor Anne Marie Macari, alleging she stole its innovative master’s degree program in poetry and set up shop at Drew University in Madison.

Former state Sen. Wayne Bryant, once one of New Jersey’s most powerful politicians, was convicted of bribery and pension fraud for taking state jobs for which he did no work and steering state business to cronies in return.

Q. We conduct yearly performance evaluations, during which we review whether employees have met expectations. If an employee fails to meet those expectations, can we legally decrease the employee's salary?

Q. One of our employees is over age 70 and has recently had memory problems and a car wreck. What (if anything) can we do to protect ourselves from potential workers' comp claims should he injure himself?

If you know an employee is suffering from depression, don’t be so quick to accept his or her hasty resignation, a new court ruling shows. Instead, you may need to identify this person as “disabled” under the ADA and, therefore, engage in an interactive process to find a work accommodation.

Q. Our company recently discovered some theft in our operation. We called an employee in for an investigative interview. He claimed to have consulted with an attorney and refused to answer our questions on the grounds that he could not be forced to incriminate himself under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. What are our choices?

As U.S. companies struggle to weather the recession, many are cutting back employee hours. In fact, part-timers now make up 5% of the workforce. Using part-timers may make economic sense, but it can give supervisors fits. Here are five ways to get the most out of part-time workers.

Ramsey County prosecutors declined to file felony theft charges against Sonia Pitt, former director of homeland security and emergency management at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, finding her conduct in the wake of the deadly I-35W bridge collapse objectionable, but not criminal.