The year that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) predicts will carry “the most sweeping HR-related changes in 30 years” starts with a bang this month as HR pros must adapt to important changes to two key employment laws: the FMLA and the ADA.

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

Q. Our company has an employee handbook. One of our employees has stated that this creates an employment contract and that he is no longer an at-will employee. Is this correct?

Q. If our employee has an accident while talking on a cell phone in a company car, is the company liable to the injured party?

By 2025, there won’t be enough college-educated Californians in the workforce to meet business needs, according to a new study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

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 ...

A federal judge has given final approval to the settlement of a race discrimination lawsuit brought by financial advisors against Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. The settlement establishes a $16 million fund, of which $14 million will be divided among class members who submitted claims.

Q. Our company’s attendance policy calls for issuing a warning when an employee has three absences. Five absences result in a suspension, and seven absences result in termination. Can we continue this policy?

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.

Government employees frequently have a constitutional right to notice and some sort of a hearing before losing their jobs. And according to a recent federal appeals court decision, that right sometimes extends to a suspension or some other discipline that stops short of termination.

Gov. Jon Corzine joined the governors of Connecticut and New York to request a $48 million grant for displaced financial workers from U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

The Atlantic City Council recently repealed a temporary ban on smoking in the city’s casinos, citing an ailing economy. Not all casino workers are in favor of the change ...

In 2007, a U.S. District Court judge in California had enjoined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from enforcing new rules that changed the language of the no-match letters issued by the Social Security Administration and the requirements for how employers must respond to the letters. DHS announced that its final no-match rule was taking effect Oct. 28, 2008.

Hand-held devices, such as BlackBerrys, Trios, iPhones, etc., make it easy for workers to check e-mail and do work at any time of day. And your nonexempt, hourly workers may demand to be paid for that screen-time. So, when must your organization pay nonexempt employees for such off-the-clock work? There’s no clear-cut answer.

More than ever, top execs are seeking HR professionals with business skills to help shape organizational strategy. Here are the top business skills that experts and surveys say executives want in HR professionals ...